Stranger Than Paradise begins with Hungarian Eva immigrating to America where she stays with her cousin Willie for ten days in New York City before heading to an older relative's place in Cleveland, Ohio. Willie is ashamed of his Hungarian heritage and is resentful of Eva's stay which was intended to be much shorter. Eva ignores his rude behavior and the two eventually begin to bond. A year later Willie and his goofy friend Eddie borrow a car to visit Eva in Cleveland in spite of their lack of interest in the area. From there the trio sets off on vacation to a Florida paradise that never quite materializes.
Although transients and others who are uncomfortable with their environments appear frequently in the films of Jim Jarmusch to this day, the theme of impermanence is particularly evident in his early work. His student film Permanent Vacation is about a man who slowly says goodbye to his home city before fulfilling the promise of the title, Mystery Train is a film set in Memphis with hardly any characters who have spent much time there, and Night on Earth takes place almost entirely in moving motor vehicles.
Thus it's no surprise that none of the three main characters in Stranger Than Paradise shows any intention to acquire a steady job (or any job at all in the case of the male characters) or any reluctance to take an extended leave of absence from his or her normal life. These characters have a price to pay for their freedom, however: although they aren't tied down in any one place everywhere they go seems to be the same as the last place they were in. The areas they inhabit in New York, Ohio, and Florida are progressively less urban but they all look equally drab and uninviting; even the beach they visit looks utterly cheerless. These are characters whose hang-ups have nothing to do with their surroundings; they're going to find the same experiences no matter where they go because they have walled themselves into a perfectly insular world where they're free to behave the same way all the time and enjoy the same limited pleasures and discomforts. This is why Willie is just as unwilling to take Eva out with his friend in Florida as he is in New York. This isn't lost on the characters, however, as Willie responds to Eddie's complaint that even in a new place "everything looks the same" with three words: "No kidding, Eddie." While Eddie is barely bright enough to recognize their situation, Willie is too apathetic and arrogant to attempt to change it. The only character who ever seems to make a conscious effort to break free from the Sartrean purgatory they have slipped into is Eva, whose motivations tend to be hidden behind her inability to communicate with her self absorbed companions. She's as ineffectual as she is enigmatic, however, as ultimately even her most impulsive actions fail to bring about any meaningful change.
Writer/director Jim Jarmusch does an excellent job of capturing the existential quandary of his characters through careful choice of locations and aesthetics. His camera tends to be still and his shots tend to be long; in fact the characters almost seemed to be trapped within the camera frame in many shots. Perhaps his most notable accomplishment in Stranger Than Paradise is his ability to capture locations that give a sense of disparate geography but still maintain a coldly similar atmosphere consistently. With only his second feature film Jarmusch was already beginning to find his own cinematic voice.
Although transients and others who are uncomfortable with their environments appear frequently in the films of Jim Jarmusch to this day, the theme of impermanence is particularly evident in his early work. His student film Permanent Vacation is about a man who slowly says goodbye to his home city before fulfilling the promise of the title, Mystery Train is a film set in Memphis with hardly any characters who have spent much time there, and Night on Earth takes place almost entirely in moving motor vehicles.
Thus it's no surprise that none of the three main characters in Stranger Than Paradise shows any intention to acquire a steady job (or any job at all in the case of the male characters) or any reluctance to take an extended leave of absence from his or her normal life. These characters have a price to pay for their freedom, however: although they aren't tied down in any one place everywhere they go seems to be the same as the last place they were in. The areas they inhabit in New York, Ohio, and Florida are progressively less urban but they all look equally drab and uninviting; even the beach they visit looks utterly cheerless. These are characters whose hang-ups have nothing to do with their surroundings; they're going to find the same experiences no matter where they go because they have walled themselves into a perfectly insular world where they're free to behave the same way all the time and enjoy the same limited pleasures and discomforts. This is why Willie is just as unwilling to take Eva out with his friend in Florida as he is in New York. This isn't lost on the characters, however, as Willie responds to Eddie's complaint that even in a new place "everything looks the same" with three words: "No kidding, Eddie." While Eddie is barely bright enough to recognize their situation, Willie is too apathetic and arrogant to attempt to change it. The only character who ever seems to make a conscious effort to break free from the Sartrean purgatory they have slipped into is Eva, whose motivations tend to be hidden behind her inability to communicate with her self absorbed companions. She's as ineffectual as she is enigmatic, however, as ultimately even her most impulsive actions fail to bring about any meaningful change.
Writer/director Jim Jarmusch does an excellent job of capturing the existential quandary of his characters through careful choice of locations and aesthetics. His camera tends to be still and his shots tend to be long; in fact the characters almost seemed to be trapped within the camera frame in many shots. Perhaps his most notable accomplishment in Stranger Than Paradise is his ability to capture locations that give a sense of disparate geography but still maintain a coldly similar atmosphere consistently. With only his second feature film Jarmusch was already beginning to find his own cinematic voice.