Following in the footsteps of the pretty good Mystery Train, Jarmusch directed another film with several different stories in it. It was for me, until I decided to watch it a second time. Night on Earth 1991 A collection of five stories involving cab drivers in five different cities. Each scene in this film is a masterpiece, no matter which country Jarmusch takes us too. It all finishes with not so subtle pathos which I resisted which highlights the unrelenting pain of life. Yet, Jim Jarmusch's tale about disparate lives intermingling during one night is both original, bold filming across the world and in native languages has to be applauded , poignant, and very funny. The acting is great by everyone.
What about the young blind woman in Paris, for example? In Ghost Dog it goes a long way to help us not be too left out of the world of Whitaker's character, or it makes every lady seem all the more odd and unique in Broken Flowers. All of the stories are of high quality, and all are brilliant in different ways. In Los Angeles, a casting agent tries to convince a tough young female cabbie that she might have a career in the movies. The direction is amazing in all its simplicity. I loved every part of it, some of them are very funny, others touching, depressing, heartbreaking, enjoyable or simply beautiful. At the end, we have learned no great lessons and arrived at no thrilling conclusions, but we have shared the community of the night, when people are unbuttoned and vulnerable - more ready to speak about what's really on their minds.
Los Angeles - A talent agent for the movies discovers her cab driver would be perfect to cast, but the cabbie is reluctant to give up her solid cab driver's career. Jim Jarmusch, a director who never neglects to find the time for the little moments, glances, exchanges in dialog, that bring out the better or lesser in people, puts his skills to full force in Night on Earth. The production hired a stunt driver to maneuver the tiny Fiat cab around a hairpin turn for one of the exterior shots in Rome. It's also the segment which provides a little extra bitter of a touch by way of the Ivory Coast cabbie, however it does come to pass as being about two outsiders thrust into a strange little moment in life. He goes for cultural miscommunication in the New York story which is the film's most tender and brotherly , the warring cultures within a city, where a black man Giancarlo Esposito who can't land a cab fights with his Puerto Rican girlfriend while being badly driven around by former circus clown Armin Mueller-Stahl, in a goofy, charming performance.
Only one of the five sequences I found even remotely worth sitting through, the New York City episode, where the only cab black man Giancarlo Esposito can hail belongs to a German immigrant, Armin Mueller-Stahl, fresh off the boat. Night on earth: 10 Roberto Benigni: 10 It's at times a little telegraphed, even heavy handed; the links between the five stories being arbitrary, almost tenuous introductions to another morality tale, but there's lots to like regardless. What Jarmusch leaves us with, then, is a highly entertaining and thoroughly oddball collage celebrating the typically inconsequential nature of most daily encounters. This movie has no message but it portrays five regions of the world most sensitively. Roberto Benigni is excellent as the offbeat cab driver who likes the company of pumpkins and sheep, and his funny segment is juxtaposed quite beautifully with the more heartfelt and raw finale.
If you are open-minded enough to laugh about a few surprises in the field of sexual experimentation which we don't see but only hear described without too much detail , this one will stay with you as one of the brightest twenty minutes in your life. Rowlands is subtle and complex: she's a rich bitch with a soft side, but we don't know if she's the former because she's a player or if she's the latter because she wants to use Ryder. And I loved how Beatrice Dalle's role went effortlessly between the bizarre and the almost ironically compassionate. And all of this is accentuated by a carefully controlled mis en scene of driving which is always visually endearing , where right when you're expecting there to be a cut it waits one or two extra seconds. I even found Dead Man tolerable on the second viewing.
That story was about someone being content with who they are not looking for the brass ring. Great music, great photography, great acting, its all good. He doesn't even know how to drive, so Esposito persuades Mueller-Stahl to let him drive instead. I've known people who were given great opportunities, and rejected them. But I'd have to say, the majority of his movies I do find to be rambling exercises in cinematic pointlessness, even if they are sometimes interesting.
You may all rest easy about Helmut's fate. In fact, it's ironic because the only cast member that doesn't pull her weight is the only one that isn't unknown - Winona Ryder. Here, a blind woman Béatrice Dalle gets a ride from an endlessly p-ssed off driver Isaach De Bankolé who rethinks his usual grumpiness after she gives him a run for his money: the woman, it seems, is scorned by life and completely disregards her ailment, scoffing whenever her cabbie asks an inappropriately curious question. Night on Earth isn't Jarmusch's funniest film, nor his most ambitious. In Paris, an immigrant from the Ivory Coast picks up a blind girl, and they have a discussion about race and blindness.
New York - An immigrant cab driver is continually lost in a city and culture he doesn't understand. The woman, however, is not interested in conversation, yet we get the impression she opens up more than the driver realizes. I wonder what this movie would have been like, if Jarmusch had also considered taxis in non-western countries. The second, stationed in New York and headed by Armin Mueller-Stahl, Giancarlo Esposito, and Rosie Perez, is the second most annoying of the segments: driver Stahl, a German immigrant, hardly knows how to drive, so his customer Esposito takes over the wheel and loudmouths his way through awkward silences. I wondered briefly why there wasn't a segment set in Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan--to make it truly global. My only taste of him before seeing this film was the slightly later 'Dead Man', and I found that to be a very worthwhile experience and one that set me up nicely for Night on Earth. Jarmusch essentially empties the streets for his night riders.
Night on Earth isn't quite as trippy as Jarmusch's later film; but it still oozes that odd sense of cool and while you're watching it you're constantly reminded that what you are seeing isn't just any film. He's more concerned with character; with the relationship that forms, for example, between a tattooed, gum-chewing, chain-smoking young cabdriver and the elegant executive who wants to cast her for a movie. During one night, taxi drivers in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome and Helsinki interact with their passengers while driving them to their destination. This film is split into five sections, all of which tell a story about a taxi in different parts of the world. . The first of five segments in L.