The 10 Best Performances In The Films Of Jim Jarmusch

Tom Waits in “Down By Law”
With almost every Tom Waits movie performance a portrait of marginalization, usually he’s on the edges of the story, a little texture for the background, as with “The Fisher King” playing a Vietnam vet/”moral red traffic light” or in “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” as a deranged, bug-eating lackey Renfield. But Jarmusch has specialized in bringing fringe characters in from the margins and placing them front and center, and so in “Down by Law” we get the main-course helping of Waits that we’ve always craved, in a role that, unlike say his turn in “At Play in the Fields of the Lord” feels like it was written not just for him, but from him. The chemistry between the central trio of John Lurie, Roberto Benigni and Waits is a joy but Waits’ character, Zack, the paradoxically un-chatty radio DJ, is arguably the most nuanced of the three, with Waits’ aura of broken Americana optimism, so familiar to fans of his early music, perfectly jibing with Jarmusch’s beat-noir ethos. Now, the friendship that grudgingly builds between the three men, particularly Zack and Jack, feels almost redemptive and is the most moving part of the film, so it’s difficult to discuss this performance in isolation, yet there is still a particular melancholy (oh, this “sad and beautiful world”) that Waits projects even when he’s not saying anything, or interacting at all. Waits has such personality, and exudes such a personal, idiosyncratic charisma from the bullish set of his face to his hangdog, twitchy physicality to the gorgeous gravel of his voice, that it’s hard to know how much he’s acting, and how much Jarmusch shifted the orbit of the film around his persona, but however it happened, the result is totally synchronous. In fact in the film’s preference for langorous takes and atmospheric visuals over snappy storytelling it’s possible to see a correlation with Waits’ music which is often as much about rhythm and mood as melody. It’s hard to see Waits ever delivering a movie performance more defining than this one, (his soundtrack is pitch-perfect too), so it’s a good thing the infinite rewatchability of “Down by Law” means he doesn’t really have to.

Jarmusch’s films are so liberally peppered with spicy cameos and surprising bit parts that we easily could have filled this list three times over. But some that actually hurt us to exclude were: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins‘ deeply funny supporting role as the concierge in “Mystery Train,” if for no other reason than it’s such a sweet call back to his version of “I Put a Spell On You” which was such an intrinsic part of Jarmusch’s breakthrough, “Stranger than Paradise“; basically the entire, stacked supporting cast of “Dead Man,” (Michael Wincott, Jared Harris, Iggy Pop, Billy Bob Thornton, John Hurt, Robert Mitchum, Alfred Molina, Lance Henrikson, Crispin Glover, Gabriel Byrne, the Butthole Surfers’ Gibby Haynes et al) but the greatness of Gary Farmer as Nobody in particular; and that’s all before we even get into “Coffee and Cigarettes” in which the Bill Murray, RZA & GZA segment, as well as the Steve Coogan/Alfred Molina one are probably our favorites, closely chased by Cate Blanchett meeting herself and the Roberto Benigni/Steven Wright one that started it all.

Still, all that said, we just know with a resume this crammed with delicious, fetishizable performances, we’ll have missed some that you adore, so tell us all about them below. And in the meantime, because it’s the greatest thing ever, check out the entire Jim Jarmusch episode of “Fishing With John,” the bafflingly short-lived, now Criterion-approved show in which John Lurie takes a succession of his friends out fishing.