Sometimes City, 2011.
Directed by Tom Jarmusch.
SYNOPSIS:
A portrait of Cleveland, Ohio – a historic midwest city that has endured punishingly tough economic times for decades. What makes people stay in an area that those in wealthier metropolises dismiss with bemused disdain?
You’d think any brother of Jim Jarmusch, purveyor of the strange, would possess a similar love for the weird. But while there are one or two bizarre characters featured in Tom Jarmusch’s documentary, Sometimes City is lost in the mundane. As Jarmusch attempts to deconstruct Cleveland, Ohio via a collage of talking heads, he does it without any clear goal in mind, his message disappearing in the loose structuring.
Sometimes City is comprised almost entirely of those talking heads – all Cleveland locals – jammed haphazardly together. Jarmusch’s subjects say very little, beyond a constant reminder that Cleveland as a town is slowly dying, and has been for some time. The subjects, ranging from street guys to businessmen to Harvey Pekar to a transsexual prostitute, probably have a lot to say, but Jarmusch’s inane questioning prohibits us from ever realising it. “Do you have anything else to say?”, Jarmusch asks everyone, bored, sounding constantly disappointed with the answers that he’s getting.
It gets to the point that you wish Jarmusch would stop treating the people in his documentary like friends and actually prompt them for more revealing answers. But he doesn’t, and as such there’s not much in the way of profundity. It seems like Jarmusch could have confused grittiness for depth. Sometimes City looks rough, with a depressed area filmed intentionally lo-fi. I can’t figure a good reason why.
Cleveland, like every great city, is an undoubtedly fascinating subject, but this isn’t the documentary for it. At the end, we’ve been made consistently aware that Cleveland is in decline, with little explanation, and been shown some appropriately grim images of run-down areas, with no great context. It’s unforgivably tedious, wasting the views of clearly passionate locals through Jarmusch’s unadventurous “Do you like living in Cleveland?” questions.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Brogan Morris – Lover of film, writer of words, pretentious beyond belief. Thinks Scorsese and Kubrick are the kings of cinema, but PT Anderson and David Fincher are the young princes. Follow Brogan on Twitter if you can take shameless self-promotion.
Originally published April 15, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
