Review of Night on Earth (1991) by Jennifer X — 18 Apr 2011

NIGHT ON EARTH (1991), the fourth film by American auteur Jim Jarmusch, is a series of vignettes centered around taxi journeys in the US and Europe over a single winter night. There is no overarching plot, but rather each segment is a study in interaction between the driver and his fare.

In Los Angeles, Winona Ryder is a 16 year-old tomboy taxi driver and Gena Rowland is a Hollywood casting agent. In New York, Armin Mueller-Stahl is an immigrant from East Germany who gets a crash course on American culture after he takes Giancarlo Esposito and Rosie Perez to Brooklyn. Crossing the Atlantic, we first go to Paris where Isaac de Bankole, an Ivorian immigrant who faces the challenge of racism daily, picks up blind woman Béatrice Dalle who could care less what colour his skin is.

The last two segments are less about class or race and more humorous and individual. In Rome, Roberto Benigni finds an opportunity to confess a long list of sins after he picks up priest Paolo Bonacelli. This is a hilarious scene, the best part of the film. In Helsinki, Matti Pellonpää brings three drunks home (Kari Väänänen, Sakari Kuosmanen, and Tomi Salmela), but after they bemoan their misfortune, he tells them what real suffering is.

For the most part, this is one of Jarmusch's weakest films. There is that inconsistency between the study of power hierarchies and the straight-up comedy. The Paris segment is nothing but cliches about how the blind might not see, but their other senses are more powerful than the sighted. The New York and Helsinki segments are hommages to Jarmusch's peers Spike Lee and Aki Kaurismaki respectively, using their settings and borrowing some of their actors. While the New York scene has Jarmusch's characteristic humour, Jarmusch's style is almost completely effaced in the Helsinki scene and one could believe he's watching a Kaurismaki film.

But oddly, I still feel compelled to give this film a universal recommendation, as the Benigni scene is great. Here the Italian actor is at his best with his trademark rhetoric and -- suprisingly, considering he's behind a steering wheel the whole time -- his skills at physical comedy.