Klepsydra z tytoniem
An Hourglass with Tobacco

Summary/Abstract: In Jim Jarmusch’s films the cigarette smoke which floats above the heads of the characters is very expressive. The director himself seems to have expressed his attitude to smoking in his brief, but significant role in Wayne Wang’s Blue in the Face (1995) in which a philosophical conversation accompanies what was to be the last cigarette smoked by Jarmusch before giving up. In this he compares the smoke coming from that cigarette to the transient moments in life. Another decision to give up smoking is shown in the Somewhere in California vignette in Jarmusch’s own Coffee and Cigarettes. Tom Waits is boasting about his abstinence from nicotine when he suddenly declares that the beauty of giving up smoking is the fact that when you have finally quit, you can have a cigarette again. Another vignette shows a unique dialogue between Roberto Begnini and Steven Wright held in an atmosphere filled with coffee and nicotine vapours. Begnini surprises everybody (Jarmusch included) by asking Wright: “Do you know my mother?” Wright picked up on this and the result was an interesting conversation. After the scene was filmed the Italian actor explained that he had suddenly forgotten all his English and this was the only sentence he could remember. In this case the language barrier resulted in a spontaneous exchange, but speaking the same language does not necessarily guarantee good communication. In another scene Tom Waits misunderstands Iggy Pop he recommends a good drum player for Tom’s band. Waits assumes that Pop is suggesting that his present drummer is not good. The series hoghlights issues which seem to be insignificant in everyday life; they appear and disappear like smoke. The presented relations Jarmusch presents, which are typical in his works, are deprived of the usual American haste and show something that is important to the director.

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