[sketches in a moleskine]

I walked into a Sydney Film Festival screening of Jim Jarmusch’s latest cinematic offering on late Saturday evening. Starring Isaac de Bankole in the lead role of a lonely hitman, ‘the limits of control’ takes viewers back to the roots of Jarmusch’s classics such as Deadman and Ghost Dog. At times testing for the viewer, this slowly driven narrative centres around the concept of reality, and control. In a film where the lead character carries minimal dialolgue, we are compelled by his encounters with various intertwining characters that drop by with carefully thought out observations, each giving in to a different path of thought. Ultimately it becomes rather evident that this film is more about the journey then the destination, whereby the ends is only a means. Beautifully shot by Christopher Doyle, the film is like a hallucinogen waiting for the viewer to analyse something that’s not really there.