Night Becomes Us
I love nighttime in a great city. Those metropoles that never quiet go to sleep when the sun’s long set. Where there’s always this uniquely pulsating heartbeat right under the asphalt. New York is called the city that never sleeps, and it’s true, 24 hours a day the Big Apple lives and breathes. From the strong frenetic, blustering exhalations of the day time, to the soft introspective inhalations of the night, this city is always moving. As a night owl who finds tremendous tranquility in the night, it’s my favourite time to be a New Yorker. It’s that time when the expectations of being a New Yorker are laid to rest. When I can be a homebody or street rat in the dirty, unpretentious way I like. The night is when I feel most inspired in New York City and I suspect it’s the same for many people.
Something primal and raw comes alive in us humans when we’re trying to get where we’re going. We become testy, self-centred and determined. Night on Earth is one of those films where we see people being their true selves in reaching their final destinations. The film provides a glimpse to the DNA certain cities in the world have that make them special. Out of the five cities the writer and director Jim Jarmusch highlights, Paris, New York and Los Angeles were the most special to me, not just because I’ve either lived or been to those cities, but because in the character’s interactions with one other, just as their personalities shown, so did the city’s. No other city quite comes alive in the darkness with as much romance as Paris. When I lived in Paris I never took a taxi, I couldn’t afford to so used public transportation or my feet. During the time I was there, the city was dealing with their usual strikes this time involving the public transport workers, forcing me to walk more than usual. There was nothing more surreal than walking from my classes at Panthéon to where I was staying at Porte de Vincennes. It all seemed unbelievable walking past Notre Dame, strolling around Place de la Bastille, and finally ending at Nation. It was during my nighttime excursions that I really go to know Paris and I’m grateful to have had this time because otherwise I would not have a single pleasant thing to say about Paris. There was something comforting in seeing the young African, Arab and White youths hanging out together, the stressed out Mum’s carrying their groceries and children home, and of course the cab drivers taking their smoke slash coffee slash beer breaks, before the next round of pickups. It was a wonderfully real juxtaposition to the dirty fairytale the city peddles in the lighter hours of the day.
I can’t say that I’m familiar with Los Angeles at night; the city is so overwhelmingly spread out that the thought of going out at night and sorting the logistics of safely making my way back home were headache inducing. So, I stayed in, preferring the comfort of In-N-Out Burger, a beer and cable television. Yet, I’ve always been curious as to what a night out in LA would be like. What strange birds would one encounter in the late hours and what interesting conversations would be had? I’ve been to Los Angeles a few times and unlike most people I have never been exposed to the Hollywood fantasy side of the place. What I remember is the great weather, horrendous traffic and Venice Beach. So, when watching the Los Angeles vignette of Night on Earth, I kept wondering when Corky and Victoria were going to get stuck in an epic bumper to bumper moving parking lot. That didn’t happen, instead I was graced with a glimpse of what it means to live in Tinseltown with all its serendipitous ingenue discoveries, romantic heartbreaks and non-movie people. To listen to Corky turn down Victoria’s casting offer in this age where everyone’s a ‘star,’ was to see the LA that exists beyond the celluloid imagination. There are people who have hopes, dreams and goals that have absolutely nothing to do with the red carpet. That was enlightening.
Jarmusch’s New York vignette could only have been written by someone who’s known and loved New York for a long time. I was first introduced to this city in 1996, five years after Night on Earth, and even then the city still had that grungy feel. Things were changing but I still saw a white woman dressed in a Dashiki walking a chicken across Houston, and a long-haired dude minding his own business in the West Village, his shirt open exposing his two pierced nipples with a long chain connecting the two. But most of all I remember Brooklyn before it became ‘god’s country.’ When getting a cab to take you to Brooklyn was impossible, as was getting a cab to pick you up if you were black in general. How apropos that Yo-yo gets picked up by a cab driver fresh from JFK who doesn’t have a clue. The casting of this vignette was perfect, primarily with Rosie Perez as Angela the quintessentially fuck-you talking, accent wielding tough New York chic. I mean, do we New Yorkers say fuck you that much? Maybe. Are New York girls that hard? Yeah, we fucking are, cause we gotta be. ‘Cause when you see the city for what it is, just as Helmut does trying to drive his way back to Manhattan, you get that it’s a trying world out here. Beautiful, gritty, loud and hard as nails tough, and the only way to survive is by letting go of the clownish naivete.
Man can be nasty brutish and short, and we city dwellers take it as a badge of honour. Yet at night, just as the sun sets so do our pretenses and we’re able to connect with one another. To cheezily put it: we forgo our differences in the hustle of just getting by. Because we’re all just trying to get we’re going with as little hubbub and as much humanity as we can.