NIGHT ON EARTH
A film review by ThomasL
Copyright 1992 ThomasL
Scenes in a taxi cab? How hackneyed! How Hollywood! Get real!
Jim Jarmusch's newest film, NIGHT ON EARTH, is an example of what an independent talent can do with a budget. In this film, we get great production values, and accessibility, but a lot more. The look is superb; the stories are entertaining, thoughtful and moving. Although this film is staged in five locations throughout the world, it's pure Hollywood at it's best. Jarmusch joins the big leagues with this movie as he tackles the heavy themes. In this complex smorgasbord of life, he makes the bittersweet completely palatable.
The movie is a series of five vignettes, each of which takes place in a different city in the world, simultaneously. The stories, like the lives of people in different places, have nothing to with one another, although there are some lovely lose connections (sister-in-laws, for example). The encounters all involve a cab driver picking up a fare.
The opening credits, over a globe beautifully, set the theme, and the music, by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, is perfect for this whistle-stop sideshow tour of the human carnival. That familiar Hollywood device (one of my faves, along with the calendar with the pages drifting to the floor, showing passage of time), the newsroom clocks which show simultaneous times for various cities, cues us in to time and place. They run backwards to reset, between cities. The establishing sequence in each city gives us the flavor of the city through the buildings and streets the cabbies intimately know. We always see a clock in the sequence.
We travel east, and the earliest sequence in the film, L.A., is the slowest. As the Hollywood story set on its ear, it sets the tone with its commentary about reality, movies and the chances of life. It is the stagiest.
As always, it's the quirky and individualistic characters, the mundane yet strangely striking situations, that distinctively mark the Jarmusch pictures (as well as the soundtrack, this time beautifully restrained and so more effective than usual). The characters in this picture are Everymen and women, but the short stories are some of the most compelling seen in recent memory. The New York story and the Helsinki story are both humorous and beautifully emotional. Rome, about living lustily, has a wonderful character driving. Each location really captures the flavor of the people and the place. Notable performances include the fares in New York and Helsinki,and the cabbie in Rome, although they are all excellent.
Jim Jarmusch has a keen, sweet eye, and through it we lightly caress what he sees, as he winks. What a night, what a movie, what a world!
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