Quiet City

I might not be an aficionado of the "mumblecore"-genre, and this film didn't make me one either. But it did give me a minor crush on the female lead (and writer) Erin Fisher, maybe that's a good thing.

So in this film we see a cute girl from Atlanta (Erin Fisher) who visits New York, can't get hold of her friend, and then instead hangs out over 24 hours with a random slacker (Cris Lankenau) she meets at the subway station in Brooklyn.

It's cute, and you do get to feel that the boy and girl are connecting over an intense period, but it didn't really made an impression on me. Maybe it wasn't dramatic enough, maybe the realism bored me, maybe the long shots were a bit too long, or maybe it was the "American" dialogue.

What I mean by that is that they use all of these "pause words" a lot. I even spent a few minutes counting them (by opening the subtitles in Word): "like" (229 times), "you know" (28 times), "kind of" (39 times), "sort of" (22 times), "uh" or "um" (43 times), "I don't know" (22 times) and "really" (55 times).

It isn't that much dialogue in the movie, so that is a LOT of pause words, all of which are basically unnecessary for saying something. (Sarah Hellman's two-minute random monologue might have accounted for half of the "like"-quota, for instance. How ditzy is it possible to come across as?)

Even if this is how Americans actually talk, for us europeans it sounds like they have no vocabulary and are very slow thinkers who need to insert a lot of "pause words" just to get through a sentence.

"Mumblecore" might be supposed to be ultra realistic, but I am pretty sure it could benefit such movies to tighten up the script, thereby making it more interesting and transcend boring reality just a little bit.

Finally I have to make the obligatory reference to "Before Sunrise" and say that it's unfortunately much more interesting, substantial and memorable than "Quiet City", even if the two movies are a bit different in style and shape.

I realise this review will blow all my chances of ever getting to flirt with Erin Fisher (and Sarah Hellman), but it's mostly meant as a warning for people who are interested in "real" movies, and also as a message to the director Aaron Katz.

A movie like this would have been much more interesting if the dialogue was better and more meaningful, and if it just had more of a "real" movie-feel about it. Right now it seems like something anyone could improvise over two days. And that's unfortunately not a compliment.

But of course I would rather have a thousand indie-movies like these instead of the usual predictable Hollywood-crap. I only wish they could be better than this.

This film is one of the most beautiful and poignant that I've ever seen. I'm 23, and to finally see a film that accurately portrays the conversation, fears and apathy of 21st century post-uni lifestyle is absolutely liberating. There's a great essay with the DVD which points to Tzu and Cassavettes (sic.) as pioneers in this genre and influences which I'm sure are fair and true but it's not the cine-literate side of this film I love. It's the human side. The side where a simple silly dance between 4 people in a room is an expression of utter freedom. The side where a mere high five is f****** monumental. Conversations with strangers that go nowhere and do nothing and all the while the city is peaceful and contemplative. The trains keep going, the traffic lights keep changing.

Take a chance on this movie if your eyes and ears are open to a different perspective on twenty something life.

Much like Hannah Takes the Stairs, Aaron Katz's Quiet City focuses more on dialogue than on plot. I mean, here's the plot, in a nutshell. Girl flies to a strange city to meet her friend. Girl meets strange boy and asks strange boy for directions to diner so that she can meet her flaky friend that is always late and sometimes never shows up (I mean, we see where this is going, don't we?). Strange boy accompanies girl to diner, into diner, after diner, and several days following. There's some other people involved; an art show and after party; and some six degrees action to make the plot a bit more interesting; but that's about it.

But it's a nice film. That's really all there is to it. This is yet another film by another "ultra-indy" filmmaker, focusing on twentysomethings and the way they communicate. The scene, cutely coined mumblecore seems to lump together a group of filmmakers (coincidentally, all of them seem to like each other and/or work together) who all seem to be focused on the ultra-indy tactics like self-distribution, microbudgets and digital marketing of their own films. It's interesting how the six degrees theme in the film, Quiet City seems to ring true for this whole mumblecore thing. These guys all started out individually, but we've seen quite a collaboration this year. I'm anxious to see what's next for the "mumblecorps"?

I must admit I don't know anything about independent films('mumblecore', is it?), but I stumbled onto this one after seeing more commercially successful indie films like Donnie Darko, Memento and Interview. 'Quiet City', a beautiful sounding title I might add, pleasantly surprised me. As another reviewer mentioned, the writers/directors focused on dialog, which is a refreshing experience for this blockbuster frequenter. I've seen some other small films where they take on too heavy subjects like really finding the meaning of life or why we die etc. Which, for me, made those movies come across pretentious because in my humble opinion it's pretty arrogant if you think you have a quick, easy answer for life's most difficult questions. It's not wrong to have a vision of your own but if you're not Stanley Kubrick (see: 2001) you probably shouldn't touch the subject (especially as a young filmmaker). 'Quiet City' did not make this mistake, the dialog seemed realistic and honest and the acting was very natural. No big climaxes or plot twists but a little taste of the good simple life in New York.

Nice, but only for people who like alternative film.

First of all I should state that this is not the first independent film I've seen. I have nothing against independent films in general. On the contrary I have seen many independent films that I would highly recommend. Unfortunately this was not one of them. I suppose I can appreciate the film's artistic quality. It is about as true a "day-in-the-life-of-the-average-person" story as you'll find. The dialog seems almost unscripted. The conversations in the film are light and pointless, to the point of being somewhat awkward, which is exactly what one would expect from the typical interaction amongst American adolescents of today. I suppose it's possible that I am missing the boat here but by the end of the film I failed to see how I didn't just waste 78 minutes of my life as I watched in sheer boredom two fictitious characters waste 78 minutes of theirs. Maybe I'm alone here but when I sit down for a movie I do so with the expectation to be inspired or entertained. At the very least I expect my mind to be stimulated in some way. This movie did none of those things for me.