Do you enjoy coffee and cigarettes? We can easily come in contact with coffee and cigarettes in our daily life. Coffee vending machines are easily found in many buildings and even on the street, while we can find many cafés around us. Likewise, cigarettes are easily found in all stores. Also, wherever we go, we can see many people drinking coffee or smoking. There is a movie dealing with coffee and cigarettes. It is called Coffee and Cigarettes.

Coffee and Cigarettes is an omnibus film that puts eleven sequences together to form a brief story: Strange to Meet You, Twins, Somewhere in California, Those Things’ll Kill Ya, Renee, No Problem, Jack Shows Meg His Tesla Coil, Cousins, Cousins?, Delirium, Champagne. Strange to Meet You was initially made for a comedy show, Saturday Night Live, in 1986. Afterwards, the short films were completed to make the omnibus film over 17 years. Finally, the sequences were put together to make Coffee and Cigarettes, in 2003.

The director of this movie, Jim Jarmusch, is a famous indie director. He is famous for directing Stranger than Paradise, Dead Man, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai and so on. Many famous actors appear in Coffee and Cigarettes, for example, Roverto Benigni, Steve Buscemi, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, Alfred Molina, Steve Coogan, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray and more.

As for the story of the movie, the movie does not praise coffee and cigarettes because the title of the movie is Coffee and Cigarettes. Instead, it just shows the ways people try to communicate through coffee and cigarettes. The characters keep drinking coffee and smoking. That arouses both desire and rejection for drinking coffee and smoking to the audience.

There are between one-to-three characters per sequence. Their situations include first meeting, old friends, cousins, guests or as a waiter. All parts of the movie are composed using only conversation. When I tried to listen to their conversations, they seemed to be very distinct and unusual. One character talks about himself, and the other talks about himself in the form of a reply to the first character. Thus, the conversations cross each other. And then, after a couple of minutes, the character becomes very different, and the episode ends with a strange situation. Eleven kinds of conversations happened in a small space in which people can drink coffee and smoke.

When the movie was released as parts, some of them won awards. Somewhere in California, featuring Iggy Pop and Tom Waits, won the Palme d’Or - Short Film at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993. Also, Cate Blanchett, who played a double role in Cousins, won the Best Actress in the Central Ohio Film Critics Awards in 2005. In Korea, Coffee and Cigarettes was shown at the Jeonju International Film Festival, and it received a good response from the audience.

Coffee and Cigarettes has three main characteristics. First, as I mentioned before, the movie is composed only of conversation, but it is not boring. They are so fresh and funny. Second, all of the actors appear to play themselves. In other words, the actors in the movie act as their own self but they seem a bit different, so it is ambiguous as to how much they are acting. However, this contributes to the amusement and interest for the audience. Third, the movie is a black-and-white film, and this helps to absorb the audience into the movie more.

If I select one among the eleven episodes for giving me a deep impression, I would choose Cousins?, featuring Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan. I think this episode shows well how people change their behavior depending on the circumstances.

Many episodes have many stories. If you watch this movie, you can be impressed with each individual story.