Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train is a laconic journey, in three parts, through a Memphis of the imagination. Spurred by the passion and fury of a fierce backbeat, three interlocking deadpan vignettes find rock and roll pilgrims searching for something — the ghost of Elvis, the spirit of Carl Perkins, or a vague yearning for the vaguely defined essence of pompadoured rebellion — amid the empty streets and hollowed-out hotels of a faded town still trading on a brief epochal moment in its history. A young, star-struck Japanese couple, a rebel without a cause, and a comically stoic widow traverse the remnants of a mythic city in a mythic America in search of the reflected glory of the nearly mythic but everlasting moment of its ascendence. Screamin' Jay Hawkins, one of the real-life architects of rock and roll, takes a supporting role as an eccentric hotelier working the late shift.
Criterion's new DVD and BluRay editions of the film included a Q&A with Jarmusch; excerpts from the 2001 documentary Screamin' Jay Hawkins: I Put a Spell on Me; a documentary about the film's locations and the musical history of Memphis; and essays by Dennis Lim and Peter Guralnick.
1989. 110 minutes. $39.95. www.criterion.com.
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