A lyrical almanac by a cult American indie director
Five novellas, random stories based around taxi passengers and drivers in various parts of the world: Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome, and Helsinki. Already famous by the time he made this film, Jim Jarmusch brought together a wonderful international cast in order to show the life and inhabitants of major cities in the early 1990s from the point of view of their circulatory system, taxis, whose drivers may be the best interlocutors: random people who can easily be trusted with our dreams and dramas in the light of neon signs and streetlamps.
Jarmusch’s affectionate and ironic nocturne develops his favorite motifs—wandering, loneliness, and the absurdity of human life—placing them in the situation of an encounter that removes social and personal boundaries. The script, which took eight years to complete, was written for specific actors, both friends and those Jarmusch dreamt of working with. They include the director’s beloved Roberto Benigni, actors who are talismans for his brother in cinema, the Finn Aki Kaurismäki, the muse of another pillar of American independent cinema, Gena Rowlands, wife (and star of the films of) John Cassavetes, rising star Winona Ryder, debutant Isaach de Bankolé, who would go on to appear in a number of Jarmusch’s films, and Béatrice Dalle, icon of the new generation of French cinema. The score was specially written by Tom Waits. But the star of each novella remains the city, this time not just New York but other mythologized capitals of world cinema. For Jarmusch the best view is not from a bomber as for Brodsky but from the window of a car passing through the city at night.
Night on Earth
Director Jim Jarmusch
France, UK, Germany, USA, Japan, 1991. 129 min. 18+