Jim Jarmusch’s first feature shows how his particular directing style formed.
Sixteen-year-old Allie Parker wanders around Manhattan in search of meaning. A big fan of the jazz musician Charlie Parker, Allie believes they are bound to meet—they do, after all, share the second name. He visits a girlfriend to read her a book, and goes to see his mother at a psychiatric institution. He has nowhere to go, but something does not let him linger in one place.
Permanent Vacation was meant to be Jarmusch’s graduation work, but his film school refused to accept it despite the funding provided. Shot on a minimal budget, the film explores the themes and visual style that Jarmusch would remain faithful to throughout his career. It is, perhaps, a semi-documentary journey of the protagonist toward himself. Allie Parker became a prototype for many of Jarmusch’s later solitary characters: aimlessly wandering the dirty streets of New York, reading French poetry, and flirting with girls at the cinema, he seems to be searching for something that cannot be expressed with words.
Permanent Vacation
Director: Jim Jarmusch
USA, 1980. 75 min.
18+