Mystery Train

"A Japanese couple chases their idol, Elvis." So read Netflix's summary of my latest flick. Mystery Train sounded just excellent enough to end up in the queue, but threatening enough to keep this film in its sleeve above my television for 2+ months. Reader, do you ever find yourself in this situation? Are you ever overwhelmed by the pretentious shit you ask yourself to swallow? If you've learned anything about me through this blog, you know that I am a victim of my own desire to in some way maintain my edginess. But for whom? I suppose only you, dear reader.

So what finally convinced my to strip off the sleeve? Two things. Number one: I hate returning flicks unwatched--I'd rather sit down to dinner with Ryan Reynolds while High Art blares in the background than fail to "Rate What You've Watched." And two: the flu. I woke up with a migraine and spent my day as a pool of seasick vomit, too numb for homework, too caffeinated for sleep. So guilt-ridden, fever-fogger me sat down to fulfill my duty to you, faithful reader. And, as they usually do, 1989's Mystery Train paid off.

Mystery Train tells three different, yet intertwined stories of people who find themselves (purposely and not) tooling around Memphis.  There are the Elvis-obsessed tourists who find out how cool it is to be eighteen, Japanese and in Memphis at a shitty hotel waiting for Graceland.  There's the Italian woman, Luisa, trying unsuccessfully to get back to Rome to bury her husband--this death is never explained, nor was the corpse at the airport ever referred to beyond her first scene.  I found this immensely troubling, and I hoped throughout that the cadaver would reappear by the end of the flick.  It never did.  Wonder what they do with dead people when their flights get cancelled in the middle of July... Anyway, she shares a room in said establishment with a broke stranger who rambled her way out of love with an Irish greaser.  And finally, there's the makeshift trio of drunkards who accidentally shoot down the owner of the local, all-night, liquor emporium.  And all of these stories are connected. And all along you think there is no way this is going to end well. 

And I won't tell you either way.

While each of these merry-travelers is a joy in his/her own special way, the side characters had my heart all-aflutter for this flick.  The two men that man the inn in the middle of the night (one of which is the Screamin' Jay Hawkins) are hilarious!  And to hear Tom Waits' growl on the radio with every new story somehow soothed my growing anxiety about the fates of the characters I had become so fond of.  There's nothing quite as comforting as Mr. Waits's cadence, is there reader?  

And then of course, Mystery Train features the best pick-up line since ever.  A man that looks like Santino (Did she just reference season two of Project Runway? Yeah she did) ambles up to Luisa at a local diner. He plops down and informs her (in a much less direct way) that Elvis's ghost told him to give her his comb. Hilarious, no? I would have gone home with him in a second. Fortunately for me, I am not from Memphis, because this line is apparently as common as ye olde "fell from heaven" pass near Graceland, and I am not a fan of syphilis. Oh well.

Rule #1 for smart travelers: Never give back the drunk guy's gun! 

My comrade du ciné's summary: "It was pleasant, but there was no conflict or climax and nothing really happened." He would say that. Eye roll. Smiling emoticon. Jay-Kay!