MovieChat Forums > La Ciudad (The City) (2000) Discussion > A feeling of hopelessness

A feeling of hopelessness

posted 20 years ago by SurrenderToto
1 reply | jump to latest

I would first refer you to menege144 in the comments section.

While I commend Riker, the director, for using non-professionals and examining real life situations, the overall feeling you receive from this film is hopeless struggle. The immigrant experience today (and I live in the NY metro area and have intimate knowledge of these things) is much struggle and much joy, along with tragedy and setback. Even the happy young man at the party is given a bleak fate at the end of his segment.

The black and white photography, while appreciated and well done, had echos of early 60's real life dramas. (I'm thinking especially of "Nothing But A Man.") The lighting was deliberately angled, as well, to give extra dramatic enhancement to certain scenes, such as the new immigrant and the girl he meets at the party, and the garment factory room. Many times we were looking at pictures, not a movie. A focused political statement was being communicated. Look at these victims, the movie sobs. On top of it all, the maudlin orchestral background music made me feel like I was in a holocaust movie. Everyone was doomed, condemned by Nazi-like bosses and bureaucrats. What a statement about supposedly hard-hearted New York! What about the places these people came from. Guess what . . . they're worse. I have seen home movies from people like the ones in this movie. Poverty is what they're escaping.

Real life is not so black and white. There is community. (It was not a coincidence that the two young people were from the same city.) There is family, blood-ties or no. There is self-help. There are many organizations (as portrayed in the movie). And there are helpful non-immigrant individuals. Yes, exploitation happens in real life (i.e., in New York and elsewhere). But that's only a part of it, unlike this partially true portrait.

If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.
~ Tolstoy

[–] sundance7490 16 years ago

I know this is really late but real life can be very black and white especially when you're an immigrant in the city. If you've watched the making of on the DVD you will see one the actors (or non-actors) named Cesar Monzon. I read an article about him that he actually moved from Peru to New York leaving his four children and his wife behind but going to live there so that he could make money to support them all. It's a slow life, one that I am priviledged not to have partaken in, but it hurts the people who have friends of this sort just as much as it does the person themselves.

I think that's why The City hit so close to home for me. I have countless friends who are immigrants (I stand out among them because I'm so white) and it hurts to see them live that way. And while Jose, Francisco, Maria, Luis, and Ana, our five protagonists in the film, try their hardest it feels as if there's no redemption in sight. But for them it's the best because they always have hope. They never lost it.

And I guess the feeling of hopelessness that the film comes across as was only to imply that their problems would never end. They would fix this one and go on to the next one. I think it was too hard on, though. I kept hoping one of the five would find redemeption but none of them do. Sometimes it does get really hard but I don't think nearly as hard as the movie portrays but it's good in that way because it provides a bit of entertainment. I think if anything the immigrant struggle is more of a boring one than hard. It works so slow, but I have not heard one peep out of my friends about this sort of life. Like the ones in The City, they never complain. They accept what they have.

I don't speak whatever.