Three Marginal Men

In “Down By Law” (1986) Jim Jarmausch is the poet of low-life characters, people who live in lonely fashion on the margins of mainstream society, the disenfranchised, not-too-bright men and women who tend to live inside their self-created but fragile bubbles.

Bobbie, a black prostitute, talking to Jack (John Lurie) the pimp she works for, tells him her mother used to say, “When you boil things the scum rises to the top.” Actually, that applies more to two of the secondary characters in the movie who betray the friendship they had with Jack and an unemployed Disc Jockey named Zach (Tom Waits.) We meet Zach in the middle of a furious argument between him and his woman, Laurette (Ellen Barker), as she unloads on him for his inability to hold a job for any length of time. While she throws stuff all over the place, including out the window, he sits there like an emotional slug, barely paying attention to her tantrum. He seems to understand why she is flipping out but it is of little concern to him. Then we are back with Jack and his treacherous friend called the ‘fat man,’ a previous colleague of Jack’s. The fat man convinces him he has a new honey that would love to join his stable of whores, so Jack, like a trusting dummy, goes to check the girl out, who turns out to be an underage female. Three cops burst in and pounce on him and take him away. Zach is next. He is sitting outside one night sucking on a bottle of beer and humming songs to himself, minding his own business. An Italian tourist comes by to disrupt his private reverie and he tells him to buzz off. The tourist writes down the expression, which he had never heard before in his travels. . Then a neighborhood shyster comes by and offers him a deal he can’t refuse: To drive a fancy car across town to an address for $1,000. What an easy gig, he thinks. When he arrives at his destination he is hustled out of the car by some cops who have been waiting for him. . They open the trunk of the car and guess what, there’s a dead body inside. Like Jack, he realizes too late what a chump he has been.

Zach and Jack meet when they become cellmates at a rundown New Orleans prison. They hate each other at first, even come to blows, but when Jack finds out that Zach was the DJ he used to listen to on the radio, his interest and respect go up a notch or two. Slowly, by dribs and drabs, a relationship develops (but never a friendship) and they tell each other their defining stories and play cards together in a situation of incredible boredom. At a certain point a third cellmate is introduced; it turns out to be the Italian tourist, named Roberto (Roberto Benigni.) Neither Zach nor Roberto remember that previous brief encounter. Roberto is actually there for a serious crime, murder, as he killed a guy with a billiard ball, an 8 ball yet, but he says it was self-defense. He is an energetic, loud, and a dominating little fellow who bonds with the other two convicts in short order. Watching the three of them relate is the greatest pleasure in the movie.

The three of them eventually break out of the prison, on Roberto’s lead, the escape barely sketched in by Jamaursch. The three spend days wandering through the swamps of the Louisiana bayou country. It’s a harrowing trip but they finally emerge on a dirt road with a small restaurant across the street. God seem to be the on their side. They send Roberto in because the name above the door is Luigi. After dark they go in to see what the hell is going on. They find Roberto romancing a dark-haired beauty named Nicolette who inherited the restaurant from her uncle Luigi. The two of them are chattering away in Italian. The boys join them for food and wine and a gay old time. In the morning they borrow clothes from Uncle Luigi and say their goodbyes to the two new lovers. Zach and Jack walk down a road that ends in a fork going east and west. The two exchange jackets, say goodbye, without a handshake or a hug, and go their separate ways. The end.

One reviewer called “Down By Law” a “neo-noir-comedy,” which is an apt description. The film was shot in lovely black and white, which I really enjoyed because I see so few B & W films these days. The cinematographer was Robby Muller. Many scenes are beautifully composed or shot from odd angels. One has to be patient with the movie because the first part of the movie is pretty slow and sometimes the characters fidget for minutes before speaking. Tom Waits is, to say the least, a very unique actor, full of little twitches and furtive glances. The comedy does not arise from scripted lines; it emerges from the oddball personalities and the situations they find themselves in. Roberto Benigni plays a kind of magical elf, boisterous, commanding and efficient, who is able to energize the other two for their betterment. He helped them lose their sense of alienation, as the three of them felt a sense of shared humanity for a period of time. The final chapter in the movie is not realistic, but no matter, we can easily accept it as fable. You buy it because you want the trio to come out okay. Roberto deserves Nicolette, and Jack and Zach deserve their liberty, as they were framed and did not do want they were accused of. The downbeat beginning ends on a high note—very cool! I am mad at myself for waiting so long to see the movie. It is one of Jim Jarmausch’s best films.