FILM REVIEW: NIGHT ON EARTH - THE NEW YORK EPISODE

"The beauty of life is in small details, not in big events."
- Jim Jarmusch

1. Slice of Life

A story is supposed to have a plot: an exposition, a conflict, a climax, an ending, etc.

Or is it?

Here comes Jim Jarmusch, American independent filmmaker, and shoots a film called Night on Earth, consisting only of five vignettes, each of which takes place in a cab in a different city. What's more, none of these episodes have what you would call a plot; they are slice of life stories - no exposition, no classic conflict, no real ending.

Let's have a closer look at the New York episode. What exactly "happens"? Nothing much. A man (Giancarlo Esposito) tries to get a cab. Eventually one stops, but the cabbie is a German immigrant (Armin Mueller-Stahl) who hasn't got a clue how to drive a car, let alone find his way in New York. The man has a brilliant idea: "You ride, and I drive." Reluctantly the taxi driver agrees. They swap seats and drive to Brooklyn. On their way they have a kind of conversation, e.g. about their names and their hats. They pick up the man's sister-in-law (Rosie Perez), whose specialities seem to be an unnervingly shrill voice and a marked tendency to use vulgar language. When they arrive at their destination, the woman gets out, the man pays the fare, and the cabbie drives off.

End of story.

Or rather, end of slice. Slice of life story may be a dead metaphor, but it is very appropriate here. It's as if Jarmusch had taken a knife and cut out a slice of the lives of these three people, apparently not bothering at all where the cuts were made. As for the "exposition", we might ask ourselves for example:

·             Who is the man?
·             What does he do?
·             How did the driver possibly get his job?
·             Why did he come to the USA?
·             How long has he been there?
·             Where does he live?
·             Is he all alone?

Regarding the ending – a very typical open ending indeed – the audience is for example left to wonder:

·             Is the driver going to find his way back to Manhattan?
·             How can he possibly keep his job?
·             Will the man still worry about the driver?
·             Will they meet again?

In a sense, that may be part of the beauty of the episode: we identify with the characters to a certain extent because they are likable (possibly with the exception of the woman), and so we start to care about their unknown past and their uncertain future. In fact, we might even wish that the man and the driver would meet again and maybe develop some kind of friendship because they started to like each other.