Customer Reviews

The City

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This movie is so moving and so provocative that I have yet to see a movie this good since I saw this one in 1998. Riker uses the techniques of neo-realist Italian cinema to tell 4 poigant stories concerning the lives of Latino immigrants. Each story focuses on characters of different ages and genders, but they share the same struggle to survive in New York's lower east side. There are fables, there are tragedies, but more importantly there is an endurance that the old man, the day-laborors, the seamstresses, and the couple put forth in a ghetto they call America.

Honestly, I only took on an interest in The City (La Ciudad) on a whim when I saw that it had gotten plenty of good reviews, had been critically acclaimed by people such as Roger Ebert, but certainly low-budget. I had recently become a big fan of vignette style films and was willing to take a look at anything. But my hopes were somewhat strange when I saw it had been made in 1998 wondering if it might be a bit timely if not outdated. As it turns out, the film is just as relevant today as it was in between the years 1992 and 1997 when principal photography took place. There is just nothing to say that can justify this beautiful piece of art told through the black and white filter that takes over four people's dismal but emotionally charged lives.

THE CITY follows five principal characters: Jose, a young but hard working man who wishes he was home with his wife and son through the letters they always send him; Francisco, a young man who stumbles into a quinceñera just after arriving from Mexico but meets Maria, a girl at the party who has felt trapped ever since her own arrival five years previous; Luis, a single father and street puppeteer who wants the best for his daughter despite living out of his car with her; and Ana, a young seamstress worker who must find a way to send $400 home to her daughter who desperately needs medical attention. The four will soon discover through their stress-filled and taxxing days that life in the city may make them or break them...but their lifelong problems will never end.

Usually a film will leave you with some sort of redemption even with a sad ending. THE CITY, however, displays the harsh truths for these poor immigrants and the emotional odysseys they must endure every day. You long for Jose, Francisco, Maria, Luis, and Ana, our loving protagonists, to find their hope. Some of them nearly do but it falls out of their grasp. The message is ultimately, their problems will never end and the ending to their stories is almost irrelevant in that it's just one part of their entire lives. It's a big fat slap in the face to an audience who is not used to this but for a lot of people it's a reality.

The amazing cast, which was made up of mostly first-timers including actual immigrants, completely blew me away. The five leads told so much with their eyes and facial expressions that you can sense desperation and blank feelings of not having a sense of comfort. Personally, it became connecting with the actual person instead of the characters they were playing due to the fact they were almost playing themselves. The long absences of words filled with atmospheric music will send a chill up your spine. Fernando Reyes as Jose brought out hopelessness but a light of hope. He's the one who spends the least amount of time in front of the camera but when you do see him, dread and sorrow immediately follow through reading the letters his wife sends him.

Silvia Goiz as Ana was my other particular favorite. Goiz was absolutely mind-blowing. Her desperation for her character trying to get enough money for her daughter's operation were incredible. The emotion she invoked on the screen was also impeccable. Her face fills the screen with hope much more than the others as her womanly stubborness dominates the screen. Her difference from Jose, Francisco, Maria and Luis is that we know, as the audience, she's the one who won't give up. Cipriano Garcia as Francisco also portrayed a feeling of innocence in coming straight from Mexico to New York and getting lost but finding a sense of comfort in a girl from the same town. The dread that envelopes his face in a twist-of-fate ending is a mistake that runs the story full circle in a simple way.

David Riker, who toiled years to put the full-length film together in starting it as a student film, has made a film that should not and will not be forgotten. It is a film that once you see it, it will stick with you. I saw it four months ago and it's all I've been able to think about for the longest time. It is not a waste of time and much different than anything you will ever see or have seen before. Give it a chance. It's not just an art film, it's much more than that. It's our world and a sign of our times. You might get something out of it and I personally never say that about any film. You may even relate.

LA CIUDAD (The City) is a beautiful film shot entirely in gritty black and white and focuses on the lives and experiences of four groups of Latino immigrants, newly arrived in New York City. The story (with dialogue entirely in Spanish) has been compared to THE GRAPES OF WRATH and it is evident why. Through the eyes of the many struggling and hardworking people we come to know during the four short stories, we see the stark reality of the immigrant experience in the United States. While WRATH gave us a glimpse into the heartwrenching traumas faced by those who came on covered wagons during the Dustbowl to seek work in the fields. The stories broke my heart, ten years ago, and breaks it all over again when I think about the subject matter in this film. The first story tells the grim the tale of a group of brick layers on call for a job, the second is about a young Mexican boy who comes to the big city of New York, the third is about a homeless man and his daughter and the fourth depicts the plight of a woman toiling in the sweat shops, day in and day out. This movie really is unforgettable and will linger in your mind for a long time.

La Ciudad is a significant documentary that provides full detail on illegal immigrants, more specifically Mexican immigrants, whom come to the United States. The structure of the film as well as the narrative was well organized. Each new story began a snap of a picture. The picture and/or camera can be analyzed as a way of communication between immigrants in the United States and their family back in Mexico. It is a way to keep in touch with their loved ones when they are far away. Another observation on the documentary is the repetition of windows. In the case of Luis, he takes his daughter to school and sees the classroom being conducted through a window. In order to enroll his daughter, Luis is to provide proof that he lives in the city. However, he does not have legal proof, a rent receipt or a phone bill, and is denied the enrollment of his child. In the film, immigrants would always look inside windows. The windows can be seen as the United States and how legal and illegal immigrants see the United States as a whole. However, it is the opposite of what immigrants might have expected the country to be. Immigrants might have expected a better life and/or working conditions once they immigrated to the country. They are struggling to obtain a decent job and are not allowed to receive public benefits such as an education as seen in the case of Luis. The film's scenery is in black and white which gives the viewer an impact on the stories that have been presented. It lets the viewer see that not everything in this country has color.

La Ciudad is an exceptional piece of work. The movie portrays the point of view and the stories of Latino immigrants in the city of New York. The movie shows their hardships and experiences in America to try and get a chance to live a good life in the "land of opportunities." Whether the hardships may be hazardous jobs which could result in death and with such miserable pay. The right to an education being violated because one does not have proof of a reciept from rent or a telephone bill. Long hours in labor with no pay for a long time, cutting off family needs for medicine or better health. Or just not knowing the city and stepping outside to buy food result in the immigrant getting lost in the big city due to the strange and unfamiliar environment where every building looks the same.

It is shown in black and white to give more of an effect and some symbolism which may need a second viewing to catch. But overall, it is a wonderful movie. It allowed me see through the windows of reality to see the actual picture of the whole ordeal. I highly recommend this movie to everyone.

I found La Ciudad a very different movie from any other movies I have wathched. This movie is split into four narratives of Latino immigrants living in the city of New York. Immigrants come to the US with many dreams in their minds. These dreams include getting higher education or getting thier childeren higher education, getting rich, and living a happy and high standard life. This movie shows how these dreams of immigrants are turned down and broken because of the exploitations at thier workplace and the laws of the city and the government. This movie also shows how the immigrant children are affected from these laws and exploitations. For example, Luis's daughter Dulce cannot get addmission to school, and Ana cannot do anything to treat her ill daugheter who is not with Ana. I like it how the movie is shown in black and white; it really matches with the narratives that are shown in the movie. It also indicates that although immigrants hope to have happy and colorful lives in the US, they are not able to have them because of the laws and exploitations. Overall, I really liked the movie and I would encourage anyone to see it.

"La Ciudad" portrays the detrimental and unfortunate conditions immigrants from Mexico and Latin America experience upon their arrival to the United States. The film's symbolism emerges from the binary, black and white contrast and the recurrent appearance of photographs of several immigrants. The film is structured on four individual cases which speak for and represent the faces of thousand of immigrants and the miserable life they succumb to as they realize earning a decent life in America is solely a bewildering idea. "La Ciudad" recounts and depicts the predicaments immigrants encounter: linguistic barriers, unemployment, and social discrimination through the denial of educational and proper health services, exploitation, and living life in the U.S. by chance, isolation, and misery. For instance, in two cases presented in the film, little money, high hopes, and luck is invested in lottery tickets, yet Jose (an immigrant laborer) dies as his work mates quarrel over their indigent lives as a consequence of exploitation, intermittent unemployment, and cheap commission. On the other hand, Dulce and her father are homeless and survive in the U.S. by putting up puppet shows and earning tips.

While the actual setting of "La Ciudad" is not specified, the setting is not mentioned to emphasize the situation for immigrants is continuous and periodic through space. "The City" the immigrants reside in, coupled with the binary hue through which the film was documented, takes the viewer back to the American Industrial Revolution, when workers and laborers lived in slums and nonetheless, continues to be the home of minorities and Latin American immigrants. Once the film concludes, it is revealed the film was documented in the urban parts of New York City.

The format in which "La Ciudad" was filmed is poignant but realistic. The imagery illustrates the wretched lives immigrants experience on a daily basis, from numbing their hopelessness through illicit substance addictions, to child labor in the menacing streets of urban ghettos. Moreover, the role of the photographs in the film serve three functions: to reminisce the final day immigrants spent in their native countries as a memory keepsake or the photographs they want to send home as a form of showing their "progress," and to convey the irony of living in America as people who observe these pictures cannot sense the truth, and the silent, penurious life, immigrants live. In addition, the photographs are pivotal as they are tools of struggle to end skepticism across the borders in reference to the actual lives of immigrants in the United States.

Overall, the photographs in the film aim to break preconceived notions and stigmas against immigrants when they are charged for "stealing" American jobs as well as dismantling misleading ideas that money in the United States is easy to obtain as is a job.

La Ciudad is an an epic film that portrays the struggle that latino immigrants face when migrating to the United States. With different not resolved problems that the charecters face, they introduce us to a world that is difficult to perceive. The poverty and stressfull lifes that undocumented immigrants live by is detrimental. Despite their happiness portrayed in the picture that each one of them takes in the photo studio they all go to, the happiness depicted is actually just the image they want their family members to see, and themselves want to achieve. With the inspiration that one day they will achieve the American dream they are persistent to continue their struggle even though they are invisible to the great city.

La Cuidad was a good movie that helps show what some immigrants have to indure. The movie takes place in an urban setting in New York. It gives four sepaerate tales of four Latin immigrants with all of them having a connection because they all eventually visit the same photgrapher. The movie is pictured in black and white which adds to the effect it has on the viewers. The tales work to show the mistreatment of immigrants here in America. In the movie, immigrants were being cheated out of their pay, children were refused by schools and more. The movie is well constructed and gives a real view of how hard being an immigrant can be.In one section, the film portrays dozens of male immigrants on a New York corner ready to work for anyone who came. I do reccommend this film especially to those who are interested or working with the subject of immigrants.

Four short films that tell the story of new Latin American immigrants struggling to "make it" in New York City. The first story is about day laborers begging for work on street and eventually finding it - and learning that they were tricked in the deal. The second is about a young man coming from Mexico, wondering why he left everything he had behind, and eventually falling in love with a girl from his same home town. The third is a seamstress working in a sweatshop desperate to send money home to care for her sick daughter. And finally, the last is a homeless puppeteer who lives with his young daughter who tries to get his daughter into school without any papers.

The actors were not professionals but were perfectly casted - real and authentic. The black and white cinematography and imagery was spellbinding - capturing the facial expressions, the anxieties, the emotions, the heartbreak, the sweat on the brow, and all of the frustrations.

This film is solemn and somber throughout but tugged at everything human in me.