night on earth (w&d jarmusch)

There is, as Snr Amato pointed out afterwards, a glorious faith in the latent possibilities of globalisation inherent in Jarmusch’s 1991 globetrotting movie. Alongside 21 Grams, and with a sideways nod at Magnolia, the movie adopts the portmanteau approach with five stories included under the titular umbrella of a single night on earth. Each night is captured in the exchange between a taxi driver and their client(s). The movie is set in LA, NY, Paris, Helsinki and Rome, but the globalisation is given added emphasis by fact that the two cab drivers in NY and Paris, (Armin Mueller-Stahl & Isaach De Bankolé), give two of the film’s finest performances as fish out of water looking to make a living as immigrants. Indeed, one of the best sequences is the scene with Isaach De Bankolé and two arrogant, drunken Africans whose condescension leads to him telling them to get out. From the outset there’s a heady, liquid pleasure to Jarmusch’s filmmaking, as though the possibilities are endless now, the wall is down (Armin Mueller-Stahl’s character comes from Leipzig, “near Czechoslovakia”), the Twin Towers are still visible in the background. Globalisation is going to be fun, baby, it’s going to open doors, create connections, reaffirm the kind of honest working class values that Winona Ryder’s cab driver defends. In which sense, Night on Earth, pre Covid, pre-Iraq, pre-911, pre-Brexit, Trump, Ughyurs, feels not so much like a night on this earth, but a night on another earth, one that was swapped out for the earth we are currently saddled with. Another earth which existed once upon a time, before Brooklyn became gentrified.