Jim Jarmusch: I'm for the survival of beauty, I'm for the mystery of life!

The famous director, while talking about his latest film, narrates details of his life and concepts. Parts of the interview made by journalist Xan Brooks, for the Guardian newspaper, Telegrafi brings you below.

Cuyahoga Falls is a middle-class neighborhood in industrial Akron, Ohio. When Jim Jarmuschi was a young man, he avoided water. He knew that if the city is peaceful, the Cuyahoga River is toxic. The acids from the factories had made it orange. In June 1969, a spark from a train ignited the river and flames shot as high as a five-story building. Fifty years later, Jarmuschi remembers the event well: "It wasn't pleasant... In fact, if you're looking for a metaphor for modern American life, there's nothing more telling than having your local river on fire."

As a filmmaker, Jarmusch likes to make films about the small details of the world. But it's hard to focus on the small pictures when the big picture is so scary: when a river is burning or the entire planet is on fire. He says: "It is clear that we are living in an ecological crisis and that the situation is getting worse. We are threatened by science denial and corporate greed. If this is the path we're going down, then it's going to take us to the end of the world."

As he explains that he has a home in Manhattan, these days he prefers to live in the Catskills. He shared the house with his partner, actress and director Sara Driver.

"This is family time," says the 66-year-old. "I say you think I'm here to heal."

The alternate view is hiding in the woods. If the apocalypse comes, "The Dead Do not Die" ("The Dead Don't Die", his last film - vj), shows the way it can happen - with the earth's axes deranged, with the racist troops supporting Trump in bars, and with an army of zombies on the main streets. Jarmuschi refers to the film as a pretty funny comedy.

"The tone is different from what I expected. It's much darker than I imagined, especially the ending. I try not to analyze these things too much, but it reflects the world we find ourselves in; to the environmental crisis... I worked on this film for two years and the whole time the planet was changing almost every day," he says.

The film was shot near Jarmusch's home, in the nearby towns of Kingston and Fleischmanns. This was thought to make production easier, but the opposite happened. The schedule was a nightmare; actor Adam Driver was free for just three weeks. Above all, it rained constantly. The director gets the flu and breaks his finger.

"And then we had to rush to finish it and take it to the Cannes Film Festival," he says. "I wouldn't have changed the film."

As a child in Akron, Jarmuschi dreamed of running away. The place was very small, very conservative. Each worked for rubber companies: his father for BF Goodrich, his uncle for Goodyear, his neighbor for Firestone. His mother, Betty French, was an arts reporter for the Akron Beacon Journal. She wrote for the young Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire, while covering the Hollywood wedding of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Jarmuschi remembers the sound of the Royal typewriter when he wrote articles for local magazines. He says that his mother is the one who encouraged his love for art – for music and for film. But, surprisingly, it was also inspired by Ghoulard - whose poster is on the last film.

"There was a TV show, every Friday at 11:30, when they played horror, sci-fi, monster movies... If you grew up in northeast Ohio in the 1960s, you would have been influenced by it... Do you know who the guy is? his? I do. Ghoulard was played by a TV host named Ernie Anderson, who would later be the father of Paul Thomas Anderson (one of the greatest directors today - vj). I have only met Paul once. You said: 'You are Ghoulard's son'! He rolled his eyes a little but, hey, man, he was my bohemian dream – a weirdo dad like Ghoulardi."

Jarmusch is like a pop-culture sponge. Or as Joe Strummer would say: "No entry, no exit".

"Style is important," he says. "Martin Scorsese says that's what sets directors apart."

Jarmusch says that the films are his reflection: "I know that I have a laconic approach. I know I speak quietly and slowly. Maybe I even think slowly. I like slow music. I like slow movies. This is natural. Godard said that every director makes the same film, over and over. This is probably true in my case."

Even his personal style is constant. His hair turned white when he was young, around the time the Cuyahoga burned, and it hasn't changed in nearly 50 years. Compare a photo from the 1980s with one from today. It's hard to tell the difference. He has the same features. Even in photography, there are the same poses: you see yourself as a leader in the picture you take.

"My personal style, how I look and dress, I do not consider as part of my art. I remember when I would go out and people would say, 'Oh my God, you wear black clothes, you dye your hair white, and you make black and white movies. What a stale'. None of these things related to me. The hair had turned white prematurely. I started wearing black as a teenager because I liked Zorro and Johnny Cash," he says.

When he first moved to New York, he wanted to be a poet or a musician (whichever came easier). Most of all, he wanted to discover himself and distance himself from who he was in Akron. Then Manhattan was no more beautiful than Cuyahoga Falls with its dirty river. It was 1977, with no electricity, the Summer of Sam ("Summer of Sam", associated with serial killer David Berkowitz - vj), graffiti everywhere and almost everyone near bankruptcy. But it was a creative time.

"It was dirty, it was dangerous. It was everything I had dreamed of. And if you went out at night, you saw Andy Warhol. You could see Ornette Coleman walking. I met experimental filmmaker Jack Smith. He handed me a business card that read: 'Jack Smith – exotic theatrical genius'. I met Nico on the street and she invited me to have tea with her. It was… uh,” he says.

He knows that his films tend to divide audiences. What some see as beautiful and strange, others consider artificial and contrived. He does not tire of misunderstandings. For this he says: "The beauty of cinema is that you are walking in Plato's Cave. Go into a dark room and enter a world you knew nothing about. You go on a trip and you don't know what awaits you... But if you write the script and collect the money for the film, and then you sit down to edit it for six months, then you are not able to walk in that world. This experience is taken from you. The result is that you cannot see the movie you made. Other people's interpretations are more valuable than yours."

When it comes to the film, he says that he does not know if it is part of the problem or part of the solution. However, it is stated that it is not for negativism nor for fatalism.

"I am for the survival of beauty, I am for the mystery of life," he says. /Telegraph/