Night on Earth **½ (1991, Winona Ryder, Gena Rowlands, Giancarlo Esposito, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Béatrice Dalle, Isaach De Bankolé, Rosie Perez, Roberto Benigni, Paolo Bonacelli, Matti Pellonpää) – Classic Movie Review 10,462)

The promising 1991 anthology comedy drama Night on Earth offers five taxi-driver stories set in different cities from writer/ producer/ director Jim Jarmusch, but not one of them adds up to a fully satisfying trip.

It’s 7am in Los Angeles and casting agent Victoria Snelling (Gena Rowlands) offers her young cab driver (Corky) Winona Ryder a future as a film star. Just when things start to get interesting, Corky says no, she can’t give up her solid cab driver job, and it’s all over.

Meanwhile Helmut (Armin Mueller-Stahl) is a hopeless New York driver who trades places with his hip black fare YoYo (Giancarlo Esposito). In Paris Béatrice Dalle is a blind passenger and Isaach De Bankolé is the Driver from the Ivory Coast and they talk about life and blindness. In Rome the Driver (Roberto Benigni) picks up a priest (Paolo Bonacelli) who dies after telling him about his wacky sex life. And finally in Helsinki the winter night gives way to sunrise in a ‘worst thing that happened to me’ story, with Matti Pellonpää as Mika.

Night on Earth (1991) with Winona Ryder.

The episodic structure is frustrating but the film has its charms. The main pluses are that these episodes look great and photographer Frederick Elmes gives a larger-than-life sense of really being there. Also Tom Waits’s music score and songs are lively and attractive, and some of the actors’ playing is very striking and appealing. Jarmusch’s attractively offbeat sense of humour oozes through too, of course, to put viewers in a good mood.

Roberto Benigni is also in Jarmusch’s Down by Law (1986),

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,462

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com