Coffee and cinema: a passionate relationship
It is well known among film people that cameras are capricious, there are things they like and things they don't.
For example, a camera likes it when the breeze rustles the leaves of a tree.
The first scene of Korean director Kim Jee-Woon 's film ' A Bittersweet Life ' is a good example.
“What moves is neither the leaves nor the wind, but your heart and your mind,” says the master.
A brilliant introduction to this action movie.
One of those things that the camera likes - and scriptwriters and directors and everyone who works on a movie set - is coffee.
There seems to be an unwritten rule that you can't make a movie without coffee, cigarettes, train stations, cars, hats, sunglasses, or phones.
Or any combination of those same elements. For example, a hat smoking while a car drinks coffee.
'Coffee and Cigarrettes' by Jim Jarmusch
Jim Jarmusch manages to bring together almost all of them in his film ' Coffee and Cigarrettes '.
And he leaves us with memorable phrases like: “I like to drink coffee before going to sleep because it helps me fall asleep faster,” said by Steve Wright just before Roberto Benigni offers to go to the dentist in his place.
Two or Three Things I Know About Her
In 'Coffee and Cigarettes,' coffee and cigarettes are the excuse to bring together an excellent cast and create hilarious and surreal situations.
But in ' Two or Three Things I Know About Her ' Jean Luc Goddard creates a scene in which coffee is not an excuse, but the protagonist.
The café acts as a reflection of an existentialist dialogue narrated by Goddard himself, in which close-ups of the protagonists are interspersed with close-ups of a café seen from above, as if it were an ocean of primordial nucleosynthesis.
“To say that the limits of language, of my language, are those of the world, of my world, and that by speaking I limit the world, I end it.”
Goddard paraphrases the philosopher Wittgenstein who proposes that our world is limited by our language, which is our thought.
Men in Black
We haven't finished thinking about coffee and cinema yet. Our language (or rather, that of filmmakers) isn't finished yet. We hope your coffee isn't either (if it is, stop by our shop ;).
From coffee as a primordial nucleosynthesis we move on to other galaxies where strange creatures make coffee to the rhythm of “wanka wanka.”
We're talking about the original Men in Black , starring Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith. Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) offers newly recruited Agent J (Will Smith) a cup of coffee to prove that "a group of intergalactic refugees wanted to use Earth as a political refugee zone... creatures without a planet." Agent J turns him down...
And it doesn't hurt, considering that those preparing the coffee are a far cry from the specialty coffee baristas we're used to. They do have more flow than many...
You've Got Mail
And we return to earth, although to a time before the ubiquity of social media in our lives, when having an email could be the excuse (and the title!) for a love story.
In ' You've Got Mail, ' Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) reveals, to the tune of The Cranberries, the true purpose of large coffee chains. Did you think it was to sell coffee?
“The purpose of places like Starbucks is to get people with no decision-making skills to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee.
Small, large, light, plain, caffeinated, decaffeinated, skimmed, semi-skimmed…
So people who have no idea who they are or what they do can, for just $2.95, buy not just a cup of coffee but a whole new sense of themselves: grande, decaf, cappuccino.”
Pulp Fiction
We do know what we want. Or at least we know what kind of coffee we want.
As Tarantino also knows in ' Pulp Fiction '
When Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) expresses his surprise at the coffee Jimmie (Quentin Tarantino) serves him and Vincent (John Travolta), Jimmie replies, “I don’t need you to tell me how fucking good my coffee is, okay? I’m the one who buys it. I know how good it is.”
Of course, Jules is trying to smooth over the fact that he has a car with a dead body in it parked in Jimmie's garage.
Coffee and cinema have had a passionate relationship for years (something uncommon in show business) that we hope will last much longer.
This was just a brief review of some of our favorite scenes that this couple has left us.
Surely you must have your own... because in cinema, as with coffee, there are many tastes.
But you, like Tarantino, surely already know how good your coffee is (and ours!) and you don't need anyone to tell you... because you are the one who buys it.
