Movies

This is an omnibus of five stories about taxi drivers in five different American and European cities over the course of one night. Los Angeles – A talent agent realises that the cab driver taking her across the city would be perfect for a role she is trying to cast, but the driver is far from enthusiastic about her proposal. New York – An immigrant taxi driver is constantly getting lost in a city and culture he barely understands. Paris – A blind young woman travels with a taxi driver from the Ivory Coast and discusses blindness and life with him along the way. Rome – A sociable taxi driver picks up a seriously ill man and talks to him as his condition steadily worsens. Helsinki – An industrial worker loses his job and, during a taxi ride, reflects on injustice and the emptiness of love, life and death.

Night on Earth marks the end of the first phase of Jim Jarmusch’s career, after which he experimented with Westerns, gangster films and thrillers. The film explicitly places one of Jarmusch's favourite themes at its centre: communication and the problems of communication on both an individual and a collective level.

Jarmusch once again returns to the figure of the outsider in America, contrasting a talkative character with a silent one. He also introduces new elements, such as shifting part of the story from America to Europe and including a physically disabled character. Furthermore, he links the economic foundations of existence with universal existential questions of love, life and death.

Jarmusch wrote the screenplay in just eight days, envisioning specific actors for certain roles once again – he wrote the part of Corky especially for Winona Ryder, who was a rapidly rising young star at the time. Meanwhile, the role of Victoria was Gena Rowlands' first following the death of her husband, the cult 'father of American independent cinema', John Cassavetes.

The Finnish segment features Matti Pellonpää, Aki Kaurismäki's favourite actor. Kaurismäki's minimalist, absurdist and humanist poetics make him a clear kindred spirit to Jarmusch. As a tribute to Aki and his brother Mika, who is also a filmmaker, Jarmusch named the characters in that segment Aki and Mika.