Stranger Than Paradise

1984 "A new American film"
7.4| 1h26m| R| en| More Info
Released: 01 October 1984 Released
Producted By: ZDF
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

A Hungarian immigrant, his friend, and his cousin go on an unpredictable adventure across America.

Genre

Drama, Comedy

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Director

Jim Jarmusch

Production Companies

ZDF

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Stranger Than Paradise Audience Reviews

Raetsonwe Redundant and unnecessary.
Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.
Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.
Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.
aquauver Apparently, this film is a little bit boring to some people.No fascinating scene,So gorgeous actress.However, after watching it,something remains in my mind.What is it?I think it is a non narrative thing,so I can't convey how I feel.The reason it attracts me so much is just because this situation is similar to me.I am a college student,and once I have a extra money, I definitely use it so fast.It is true of every students all over the world.What stops my action is only smart and good looking girl's whisper.
Movie_Muse_Reviews "Stranger than Paradise" is so straightforward and simple that you could easily mistake Jim Jarmusch's approach for cockiness. A three-part film comprised of single-take scenes, the bones of the film are so bare that you have to wonder how a filmmaker can be so nonchalant as if expecting the audience will bother to meet him where he's at.The film follows first generation American turned New York hipster Willie (John Lurie) who is tasked with hosting his cousin Eva (Eszter Balint) from Budapest before she moves out to Cleveland to live with his aunt, then a year later follows Willie and his best friend Eddie (Richard Edson) as they road trip to Cleveland to visit Eva and finally the three's spontaneous trip to Florida.Jarmusch's story is essential a alternative distillation of the American dream. It features an unglamorous immigrant story, two guys who see success as gambling their way into good fortune and a Florida vacation that's ten times worse than whatever picture you currently hold in your mind for a Florida vacation. Jarmusch presents these in short scenes that end with fades to black, usually brief moments of character interaction in which at best we get a flavor of who these people are and how they feel about each other. The tone is somewhere been mundane and laid back, with the occasional moments of drama and levity feeling like major breakthroughs in storytelling.As such, the audience has to be patient and do a little work to access the real fruit of Jarmusch's labor — yet not in the decoding sense. He puts everything right out there; we have to draw our own connections as to what the value of a particular vignette could be. Presumably, he wants our own experiences to inform the subtle drama and dynamics between characters.So it takes a certain frame of mind to take something away from "Stranger than Paradise." Jarmusch puts it all out there, but not on a silver platter. He delivers this film with such poise and sure-handedness, the kind you might only expect from an established, confident auteur. He knows the story he wants to tell and how he wants to tell it, and he's not concerned with what anyone expects or wants. Naturally, it makes "Stranger than Paradise" far from a crowd-pleaser, yet for anyone interested in the nuance of filmmaking and visual storytelling, it's a really admirable, approach with a distinct vision.~Steven CThanks for reading! Visit Movie Muse Reviews for more
Davalon-Davalon I read the raves on this, including the 4-star one from Roger Ebert, who I always trust (even though he's no longer with us), so I thought, "Okay, it's going to be great." I and my husband stared in slack-jawed amazement at a poorly-shot, horribly edited, plot-less, pointless exercise in... what? I was willing to give it every break, even up to the final scene... and then I thought, WTF? A woman comes from Hungary to apparently visit her aunt, but because the aunt is going to the hospital, she's forced to stay with her Neanderthal cousin who has as much intelligence as a mentally challenged toddler. The cousin's friend, with his Eddie Cantor eye movements and constant rubbernecking, had slightly less intelligence. At first I felt sorry for the woman, because she seemed trapped by the whims and the stupid decisions of her cousin and his idiot friend. But then she does something near the end of the film that, while it's understandable, erased all the goodwill I had built up towards her. Also, I cannot understand how any of the three "adults" in this "story" could think it would be acceptable to leave an elderly aunt living alone in a god-awful snowy city with apparently no friends and very little English-speaking ability. I thought it was heartless. I felt the woman, as an actress and as a real person, would have never ever accepted the insults and stupidity she was presented with, but she willed herself to do it for whatever minor paycheck she received. For a while I was getting into the "Twilight Zone" spartan environment of it all. The empty streets and landscapes. The desolation, the isolation, the overwhelming deadliness of these people's lives. But since the two men in particular seemed just mind-bogglingly stupid, it was hard to care for one second what happened to them. In fact, the only person who actually seemed to have any definable feelings was "Billy" the young man who apparently had a crush on the Hungarian cousin. I do not know why this has received the raves it has received. If you want to stare for 90 minutes at shoddy black and white footage, of scenes that are cut unnaturally, of dialog that is painfully and obviously improvised in hopes of finding a common thread that makes sense, if you want to invest your emotional energy into people that really don't deserve it (although the female character does... she just doesn't end up being smart enough to get out while she can), then, please, go ahead and have the time of your life. When it ended so abruptly and unbelievably , it just left me with a sick pit in my stomach. If this is what people call "art," then I still have a chance to pursue my creative dreams, which, yes, I believe are far superior to this leaden fake film.
dougdoepke Viewers appear to either love the film or hate it. Like any good work of art, STP tries to get us to see the familiar in an unfamiliar way, such that our understanding of the every-day is deepened. So I'm tempted to say that anyone willing to look through Jarmusch's novel spectacles will be rewarded, while those insisting on a more conventional approach will turn away in disgust. But perhaps the results are not as simple as that. After all, who would want to sit through a double feature that extends the listlessness and minimalism to 3 hour duration. STP may have moments of real insight such as the dead-end diner, nevertheless as cinematic style, the limitations are obvious. (Andy Warhol's eight hours of fixed focus on a Manhattan skyscraper may be a profound idea, but as repeatable cinema the limitations are even more obvious.) Still and all, this one-of-a kind is salvaged by its droll humor. By any measure, it's an exquisite example of existential comedy. The zombified characters simply cannot communicate with one another and as a result are reduced to co-existing in darkly humorous fashion, carrying their mute fumblings from one seedy locale to another, (the ridiculous pork-pie hats are a brilliant comedic touch). And not even that most American of solutions, a big wad of money, helps; in fact the sudden windfall produces a final physical separation, both amusingly ironic and unexpectedly poignant. Apparently, Jarmusch intends this on-going isolation as a musing on the so-called human condition, since a number of scenes are filmed against featureless horizons. But whatever the over-all intention, this 'Buster Keaton meets Ingmar Bergman' oddity remains a classic of deadpan understatement. And though most of us are a lot more talkative than the three principals, I wonder--when you get right down to it which Jarmusch does--if we communicate any more effectively.