City of Hope (1991) 129m.
Mosaic by John Sayles is reflective of his versatility by virtue of its multifarious nature. Sayles, a writer-director-actor-editor, makes pains to experiment with as wide a genre and mood available to him in the landscape of commercial cinema. At first glance, CITY OF HOPE might seem his most 'ordinary': a story of the effect of corrupt politics and business on different socio-economic levels. Straightforward enough, but Sayles wants to provide as broad a spectrum as possible into his two-hour running time, so his constantly mobile camera drifts in and out of the lives of a huge cast of characters. Some provide subplots that rhizomically link together; some nudge each other in passing; yet others function only as incidental bystanders. It's a great dance that Sayles choreographs - he obviously finds enjoyment in the immeasurable ways in which people affect each others' lives. CITY OF HOPE has obvious parallels with Robert Altman efforts like NASHVILLE and SHORT CUTS, but Sayles' approach touches base on a more human level. His characters are for the most part plain speaking and down to earth, and get an equal amount of screen time (Vincent Spano has a little more than the rest of the thirty-plus cast, giving him the film's nominal lead role).
It seems an obvious idea to tell the story of a city by using a plenitude of voices instead of a sole representative one, but there aren't many films like this one around. Sayles shows us that it is this chorus that unites to provide the one voice of the city itself . In CITY OF HOPE the people take center stage: the city has no name; its streets are simply named after letters of the alphabet; we never see an establishing shot of the city; much of the story is filmed at street level (when we do see a view out of a high-rise, it's only of the building opposite); the characters all work in service of the city to keep its various mechanisms in running order. When Spano quits his construction job in the film's opening scene, he is setting himself up for a fall: without any useful function for the city he automatically becomes expendable - he fails to emulate the example of several other characters who want to be recognized as separate identities in their community (Sayles has everyone use each other's first name repeatedly). It's hard to tell if this is a city of hope or a city of hopelessness - because of its unfixity it best serves as allegory. Like the building left unfinished halfway through the story, the separate storylines remain largely unresolved. Sayles gets away with this by treating them in such a fragmentary manner that we don't really expect all the loose ends to tie up anyhow. Film's last shot is inspired - it may linger in your memory for days afterwards.
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