Overlooked Classics: Night On Earth (1991)

Among Jim Jarmusch’s many films, I feel two are often overlooked, Ghost Dog (Way Of The Samurai) and Night On Earth. The former, I’ll get to later, but I often wonder why this is the case.

Night On Earth has all of the JarmuschIan qualities you’d expect: deadpan humour; strangers thrown together by circumstances out – with their control, and surrealist stories emerging. It’s got a glorious cast, music from Tom Waits, and the cities are lit with a painterly eye by Frederick Elmes.

Five cities- Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome and Helsinki – feature, all with taxi drivers and clients bonding in unexpected ways. The first features Winona Ryder and Gena Rowlands. Corky the tomboy taxi driver (Ryder) picks up glamorous Victoria (Rowlands) a Hollywood casting agent, and the two bond with personal stories. Both give lovely performances, but their storyline feels a little thin, within the context of the rest of the film.

My favourite scenes take place in New York, between Giancarlo Esposito’s B Boy Yo-Yo and German ex-clown Helmut (Armin Mueller-Stahl) the latter of which would be better rethinking his new profession as a taxi driver. There’s great humour and pathos here, particularly when Yo-Yo notices his sister-in-law, played by Rosie Perez, walking around wearing his jacket. A volley of expletives ensue. Helmut brings sensitivity to an otherwise explosive situation though, with his sad eyes and innocence. It’s reminiscent of the dynamic between the three jailbirds in Down By Law.

Beatrice Dalle and Isaach de Bankole spar over perceptions of blindness, race and humanity in general, in the beautifully observed Paris vignette. Dalle is blind, de Bankole is from the Ivory Coast, and both have firm ideas about the world.

In Rome, meanwhile, Roberto Begnini ‘s taxi driving character confesses his increasingly perverse ways to Paolo Bonacelli’s priest, to a shocking conclusion.

The final story features Matti Pellonpaa, a taciturn cabbie who picks up three very drunk customers. Soon, it’s clear why the driver is so sullen, and his tragic story serves as a sobering reminder of the important things in life.

I llike the humanity of Jarmusch, how he lets the audience fill in the blanks, and how stories can simply taper off with no grand resolution. His eye for the minutiae is always lucid. These are snapshots of everyday events that are funny, savage and sad, but true to his vision of commonality.