Night on Earth

I think whenever you crave a late night out but can't get out of your bed you'd better watch a Jarmusch film instead while lying on your bed under a blanket with a big cup of tea in your hand. The common element that can be traced in all of his films is that he captures these laid-back vibes of such nights to a tee. In Night on Earth, we see nocturnal cityscapes of gloomy, empty streets before getting in a taxi with eccentric yet amicable strangers of different cultures, ceaselessly chatting over trifles of otherwise moral value, all while the tires humming over the asphalt roads and the cool, fresh night air tapping on the car windows. This is basically the whole movie!

The five-segment anthology takes place inside taxi cabs across five different cities on the same titular night. The first one is set in Los Angeles, and features a chain-smoking, gum-chewing, tomboyish taxi driver (Winona Ryder) and a classy casting agent in Hollywood (Gena Rowlands). This is probably my favourite out of all the five vignettes next to the second one, which takes place in New York where a German cabdriver (Armin Mueller-Stahl), with a background that remains ambiguous, is lost in a city and culture he doesn't understand. This one genuinely got a few chuckles out of me. The third episode, that's in Paris, is relatively a bit heavier on its message but is more than made up for it thanks to a brilliant Beatrice Dalle as a woman with hyper-acute senses compensating her lack of sight. In the fourth one, which takes place in Rome, we witness Roberto Benigni being Roberto Benigni as he confesses his sins to a priest (Paolo Bonacelli). The final one taking place in Helsinki is by miles the bleakest of them, imbued with a deadpan undertone but suffused in a sorrowful and grieving tone.

Jim Jarmusch values the brief, ephemeral encounters of people who had never met before, and likely would never meet again. People of nature peculiar to yours but actually quite normal once you get to know them. It's all about everyone's own attitude to life; everyone's priorities shaped by their own environment or according to their life path of their own choosing. And without Jarmusch's signature languorous aura that ties up all the segments together and casts a magical spell on the mundane to turn it to something rather celestial, this night on earth would've been a lackadaisical one with nothing memorable.

Since I have almost seventeen years of experience in the taxi business as a dispatcher and driver, I have to say that "Night on Earth" is one of my favorite movies! This movie gives a very real and comical portrayal of life in this line of work. I've known people who were given great opportunities, and rejected them. I've personally kicked drunk idiots out of my cab. I've had blind people tell me which route to take. I've had people who were so "down and out" tell me their life story. This is a film that portrays what taxi driving is all about, and it is not limited to the USA. People are the same all over the world! This movie is not yet available on DVD in the USA, but I really hope it will be soon!

It's not that this movie is non stop laughs, but just that it is so smart and such intelligent humor. It's got a clever premise about five short stories involving cab rides in different cities, but it's the specific situations that will crack you up. One after another, they are all hilarious. Roberto Benini's scene had me laughing out loud, and that never happens. The only sketch that wasnt so great was the opening one with Winona Ryder. Everything that followed it rocked and impressed the hell out of me. A smart comedy. not too many of those.

A fantastic piece of entertainment: five little stories, five cities, four languages. That's all. This movie has no message but it portrays five regions of the world most sensitively.

The L.A. episode is the weakest. It is not bad but it has one big problem: it is the first one. People start watching the movie and expect something sensational. This first episode cannot present anything spectacular, only first class character acting. There are no big surprises or twists, the episode is not particularly funny or anything. Honestly, when I saw the first minutes of this movie I thought: `O dear, I'm going to fall asleep!'

Then, the N.Y. story came. This one made me laugh real hard, and it made Armin Mueller Stahl one of my favourite actors. I started to love this movie, and I was well prepared for the Paris episode, which is, in my opinion the best, the most satisfying of them.

I found the story of the Roberto Benigni episode rather stupid, but his talent in exaggerating (so he did this even seven years before 1999's Oscar ceremony!) made up for it.

Then, the huge contrast: The liveliest episode is followed by the dreariest. Finnish workers tell each other stories from their lives, each trying to tell the saddest.

`Night on Earth' is not a movie for everybody but I think it is, in any case, the ideal movie to watch on television at two o'clock in the morning.

This is a truly amazing movie which I love. It has five different stories, each on a different city, with very different people, but all in a taxi. All the people are very different, with different background, ambitions, culture and personality, but in the end, so similar. I loved every part of it, some of them are very funny, others touching, depressing, heartbreaking, enjoyable or simply beautiful. They are all wonderful portraits of the city in which they happen. They don't show touristic locations, but how the cities really are and how people behave and think. Every story is well told, with great pace, amazing, believable dialogs and realistic characters that you get to know very well in little time. They work both together and alone. They're all great and I can't choose my favorite.

In the first segment, a young tomboy taxi driver meets a wealthy talent seeker, who wants to cast her in a movie. In New York, an afro American meets an immigrant, his cab driver, lost in the city. In Paris, a blind girl takes a ride with an irritable cab driver from the Ivory Coast and they talk about life and blindness. In Rome, a cab driver picks up a priest and starts confessing, and in Helsinki a miserable driver picks up three drunks and they speak about the most depressing things that ever happened to them.

The direction is amazing in all its simplicity. The camera angles are steady, usually focusing no the actors and allowing you to concentrate on the dialogs.But there are some that show the city, the cars passing, the buildings, lovers in the middle of the night, junkies, etc, and these have unusual quality.

The acting is great by everyone. Winona Ryder, frequently criticized, is in my opinion very funny and totally different from her other roles. I really enjoyed her acting. Gena Rowlands plays her "opposite" in a nice, underacting way. Armin Mueller-Stahl is very touching and expressive (the moment he says he was a clown is very beautiful), with an amazing use of his eyes. Giancarlo Esposito and Jennifer Perez are fun to watch, too. Béatrice Dalle is incredibly charismatic and believable as a blind young woman, and Isaach De Bankolé is good. Roberto Benigni is about as hilarious as you can get, in his one man show. His speech is obviously very funny, but Benigni makes it mind blowing. Some will hate it, though I couldn't stop laughing. Matti Pellonpää delivers his speech in a dramatic, depressive way but without overacting.

The cinematography and the music are beautiful, make this movie feel nostalgic and help linking the segments. This is a very original, worthwhile movie.