Jim Jarmusch's deadpan comedy-of-the-night is a collection of five vignettes taking place in the enclosed space of a cab ride, each occurring simultaneously in five different cities and five different time zones -- Los Angeles, New York City, Paris, Rome, and Helsinki. The Los Angeles episode takes place at dusk, as high-powered casting agent Victoria (Gena Rowlands) gets a ride from L.A. International Airport with tomboy driver Corky (Winona Ryder), who would rather go on driving her cab than take up Victoria's offer to make her a superstar. In New York City, novice East German cabbie Helmut Grokenberger (Armin Mueller-Stahl) has difficulty working the foot pedals to his hack, and his passenger, YoYo (Giancarlo Esposito), ends up driving himself to Brooklyn, picking up the shrill-voiced Angela (Rosie Perez) along the way. In Paris, an African cab driver (Isaach De Bankolé) ejects a collection of drunken African diplomats from his cab and picks up a beautiful but surly blind girl (Béatrice Dalle). In Rome, cab driver Gino (Roberto Benigni) engages in a heartfelt monologue confessing his past sexual exploits to his passenger, a priest who is dying of a heart attack in the back seat. The film winds down in the last melancholy vignette, taking place in Helsinki, as taxi driver Mika (Matti Pellonpää) picks up three inebriated workmen who regale him with hard-luck stories. But Mika has a much harsher story of his own to tell. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
Review
Possibly the most mainstream film to date by the laconic, impressionistic filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, this agreeable (if overlong) project works in fits and starts, which is to be expected in a film that is so episodic in nature. However, Jarmusch's acute eye for detail and his offbeat casting choices (including a pre-fame Roberto Benigni) pay off. The tone of the film is more lighthearted and playful than Jarmusch's previous efforts, but still retains his trademark minimalist style. One of the main contributors to the film's unerring sense of time and place is ace cinematographer Frederick Elmes, whose previous work with David Lynch and John Cassavetes proves notable here, where even the inside of a cab has an strange and inviting veneer. ~ Jason Clark, All Movie Guide
Night on Earth is a 1991 film written and directed by Jim Jarmusch.
It is a collection of five vignettes, which take place during the same evening, each concerning the temporary bond formed between taxi driver and passenger in five different cities around the world: Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome, and Helsinki. The movie begins with the Los Angeles based segment and moves from city to city as the clock turns during the late hours of the night. Jarmusch wrote the screenplay for Night on Earth in about eight days, and the decision to film in certain cities was largely based on the actors with whom he wanted to work with at the time.[1] The soundtrack, Night on Earth, is by Tom Waits.
As evening falls, sassy tomboy cabby Corky (Winona Ryder) picks up hot-shot Hollywood executive Victoria Snelling (Gena Rowlands) from the airport, and as Corky drives, Victoria tries to conduct business over the phone. Despite their extreme differences socially, the two develop a certain connection. Sometime during the ride Victoria, who is evidently a talent scout or casting director, discovers that Corky would be ideal for a part in a movie she is casting.
New York
Helmut Grokenberger (Armin Mueller-Stahl), an East German immigrant who was once a clown in his home country, now works in New York as a taxi driver. He picks up a passenger named YoYo (Giancarlo Esposito), a brash, streetwise young man and drives him to Brooklyn. Helmut doesn't know how to drive with an automatic transmission, so he allows YoYo to drive for a while. On their way, they pick up YoYo's sister-in-law Angela (Rosie Perez). The story revolves around Helmut's attempts to understand and become a part of the culture of New York.
Paris
A blind woman (Béatrice Dalle) goes for a ride at night with a driver (Isaach De Bankolé) who hails from the Ivory Coast. They both take some verbal jabs at each other during the ride. The driver asks his passenger what it's like to be blind and she attempts to explain to him, but their cultural differences and differences of life experience make things difficult. An ironic twist at the end of the segment turns upon a French pun near the beginning of it: When the driver states his nationality as "Ivoirien," some other Africans mock him with the punning phrase "Y voit rien" (he sees nothing there). After he drops off his blind passenger, he feels fascinated by her and gazes in her direction. This inattention to driving causes him to crash into another car, whose driver angrily accuses him of being blind.
Rome
In the wee morning hours, a very eccentric cabbie (Roberto Benigni) picks up a priest (Paolo Bonacelli). As he drives, he starts to confess his sins. Much to priest's discomfort, he goes into great detail about how he discovered his sexuality first with a pumpkin and then with a sheep, then details a love affair he had with his brother's wife. The already-ailing priest is shocked by the lurid confession, and promptly has a fatal heart attack, leaving the cabbie with a very troubling situation.
Helsinki
After an evening spent drinking heavily, three workers, one of whom has been laid off (Kari Väänänen, Sakari Kuosmanen, and Tomi Salmela), climb into a cab to return home. On the way to drop them off the workers talk about what an awful fix their now-unconscious friend is in, by being out of work and having to still support a family. The driver Mika (Matti Pellonpää) then tells them all the saddest story they have ever heard. The workers are terribly moved and depressed by the story, and even become unsympathetic toward their drunken, laid-off companion. As they arrive home, the sun is beginning to rise on a new day.
Until September 2007, Night on Earth was one of only two Jarmusch features not yet released on DVD in the United States (it had been previously released only in the UK). It was eventually released by the Criterion Collection on September 4, 2007.
