Night On Earth is from 1991, and a portmanteau of short dramas written and directed by Jim Jarmusch. Each is set in a particular city around the world, each taking place in a taxi cab journey. So we have roughly twenty minutes spent travelling across Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome and Helsinki respectively. With a jazz inflected bordello music soundtrack that is inimitably Tom Waits. It has cameo performances from the likes of Gena Rowlands, Winona Ryder, Roberto Benigni, Beatrice Dalle, Rosie Perez and Giancarlo Esposito, to name but a few.
These short vignettes, are all glimpses into ordinary people's lives, whether cabbies or customers. All of the stories oscillating between being touching and hilarious. The evenings in all these cities have a particular urban atmosphere,in America its often active yet hostile, neon lit and garish. Whilst in Europe a city can be half romantic slum, half sublime architecture. A taxi driver knows it all. Night time is the part of the day when the poor and the less salubrious come out into the streets. People are drunker, louder and more argumentative. And often these worlds step over the gutter and into the life of the cab driver. Cab drivers are particular folk, between jobs, in the meantime making a living off driving a taxi. Often learning to be adept at managing and talking to people from all walks of life.
In Night on Earth - a female cabbie really wants to be a mechanic, not a film star - an ex-clown from Germany loves his job yet cannot even drive the cab properly - a french speaking cabbie from Cote de Ivory strikes up a conversation with a blind young woman who possesses second sense - an Italian cabbie instigates a long and embarrassing confession to a priest he picks up - a Finish cabbie listens to a tale of hard times from three drunken men, then tells them his own tragic tale of misfortune. The subject matter of the film may sometimes feel slight or incidental. But this film is really all about people spending a short journey together exchanging their shared humanity with each other. Its quite the most heart warming and delightful film and one of Jarmusch's best.
CARROT REVIEW - 6/8
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