DOWN BY LAW

dMYD DVD
Starring Tom Waits
Trailer

M

Children by their millions scream all morning across the world – it’s time for school, it’s time to learn and it’s time to get punched in the face. The comparable adult experience is the mass hysteria that grips an average crowd at V Festival or that Hyde Park-O2-Mediocrity-Wireless-Backslap-Gathering-Thing. These people aren’t screaming for The Script, or Scouting For Girls. That’s medically impossible. No, en masse they’re pleading, screeching, bleeding from their mouths because they’ve been told that they have to watch an art-school film, on pain of being tarred with the idiot brush. Time to get cool.
Down By Law is art. It’s not entertainment. But, wait, no, of course it is, if you’re entertained by black and white, boredom, tracking shots and interminable stretches of silence, like a wistful psychotic reality-bendingly trapped in a 1940s photograph. Don’t go expecting to be mildly diverted even if you’re a fan of Rain Dogs; though the piece does stand as a Monotone Waits Festival dedicated to his gravelnessess’ fearsome acting prowess, it has none of the dive-bar charm of the man’s music or tightly drawn characters, preferring instead to cruise along blasting vagueness from a rusty grey cannon, never committing to a style or a meaning. It’s a Jim Jarmusch film, so you get some bang for your stolen torrent from a cornucopia of themes, hastily sketched out in whatever genre the director pinned his tail on that day. It’s a film about men, freedom, isolation, Tom Waits, the breakdown of language, brotherhood, mime, time, crime, nature, lust, emptiness, DJs, relationships, Italians, music, meaninglessness, misunderstanding, law, Tom Waits, slapstick, footwear, inanity, intolerance, barriers, boredom, fighting, loss, coffee, choices, penance and Tom Waits. If you’re interested in skimming lightly over all of these at the same time then Down By Law is the best experimental work in the medium of celluloid ever made. If you only want one or two then go watch Toy Story, it’s a laugh riot and the third one’s coming soon YIPPEE, WHOO, COOL!