pigeons and ice cream

One of my favourite movies is Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. The story line appeals to me - it's a gritty urban story about a modern-day samurai (Forest Whitaker) and how he lives by his ideals. As a hip hop fan, this movie's a must-see because it was the RZA's first film score; he also has a cameo in it. As if that wasn't enough, there's also a cameo by Gary Farmer.

But those aren't the only reasons I enjoy this film (which is my currently third most watched movie of all time, after Pulp Fiction and Monty Python and the Holy Grail). The movie has one of my all-time favourite relationship depictions: the main character's best friend is a Haitian ice cream man. Although the Haitian doesn't speak English, and Ghost Dog doesn't speak French, their relationship is so easy and comfortable; I aspire toward that level of comfort in my friendships. There's also Ghost Dog's friendship with a precocious little girl. What struck me about this relationship was how he passed on his knowledge to her; there's one scene in the film which (for me) distilled the vital and unconscious passing on of wisdom from one generation to the next.

I obsess over things I like. I read about them, I talk about them, I research them, and I find out everything I can about the person/film/book/event/place/etc. I've just been going through a phase where I've been obsessing (again) about Ghost Dog, and it's reached a point where, given half a chance, I would call up the people responsible for this film being created, just to talk to them about it. Not so I can write about it, but just to get some more information about this movie I like so much, because I want to know. I don't even know what I would ask about, I just want to know as much as possible.

Recently, while reading some more about Ghost Dog, I came across a passage on reverse shot which prompted me to write this post. Jeanette Catsoulis wrote an article about the film's writer/director, Jim Jarmusch:

"What interests him is cultural collision, the racial friction and cross-pollination that reaches beyond black and white to the roots of a culture where everyone seems to espouse a hyphenate identity (so much so that the hyphen itself has mostly disappeared)."

That's what interests me too.

In Ghost Dog, characters seem to travel across racial boundaries, yet retain a very strong sense of racial identity. The character Ghost Dog carries himself as a Black man, and the only times you sense his capacity for warmth in the movie is when he's dealing with other black people - his Haitian friend, the young girl, the brothers on the street. But yet, he lives by the code of Japanese warriors, and his conviction in his path is inspiring and infuriating. To add to the racial incongruence, Ghost Dog has pledged allegiance as a samurai to a member of the mob, a white man who once saved his life.

The mob carry the hot-tempered mentality of an eye-for-an-eye, but as a group of aging Italians, they've lost steam. But one of them's a hip hop fan, and starts spitting rhymes during a meeting, and naming off rappers (including PE's Flavor Flav).

The Haitian ice cream man, with his beautiful and infectious smile, and complete lack of English, embodies an optimistic and romantic view of immigrants in North America. What struck me about his character in terms of race and culture, was the fact that I didn't find it unusual that someone could survive in a city without speaking the language.

That sort of thing doesn't strike me as strange - or it didn't until I was trying to order a meal in Little Portugal. The lady working at the restaurant spoke no English, and I speak no Portuguese. Using my limited Spanish, I managed to order the best halibut meal I had ever had in a restaurant. Didn't even think about it as an issue. Until something someone said, and I realised that the global existence I had taken for granted could be seen as a threat, in the same way I find attitudes resistant to it threatening.

I digress.

Back to Jarmusch. I also enjoyed Coffee and Cigarettes. And not only because Iggy Pop was in it. You should watch it.