As the title suggests, this documentary is about the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, which cuts through those boroughs as it carries millions of people in and out of Manhattan each day. Well, actually, to say it is about that is perhaps misleading, because this documentary is more of a meditative pieces that steps away from the subject and comes at it through a much different subject – indeed it really doesn't go into much detail on the road itself. Instead it goes into a community living in the shadow of it, unnoticed by those unable to see it as they sit in traffic just above; in particular we focus on the owner of a small family flower shop which serves the nearby cemetery.
In some ways the film is perhaps more interesting by taking a different angle than going directly at it, but at the same time it is almost too obtuse in how it does it. The key word is "meditative" and the film pushes for it all the time – in fact at one point I wondered if the editing process involved stripping out anything that got close to a concrete documentary approach. In some ways this will be fine, because if you are in the mood to sort of be carried by the film's approach, then you will like the floating nature of the focal points, and the way that it is more suggestive than informative. However for me what it meant was that I ended the film not really drawing into the road itself, nor the communities below it and their connection to it; I liked the device of approaching it via the flower shop, but again this approach was too soft and lacking focus, leaving me feeling unsatisfied with that too.
It was well made from a point of view of doing what it wanted, and delivering this feel of openness and meditative consideration, and I guess for some viewers this will be a reason to adore it – for me it felt like I was constantly seeing things out of the corner of my eye that were interesting, while the film deliberately tried to keep them there.