NYFF Doc Corner: Frederick Wiseman's 'City Hall'
Friday, September 25, 2020 at 12:00PM By Glenn Dunks
The idea of ‘seeing ourselves’ on screen relates most often to race and sexuality, which is fair enough. Rarely is it spoken about in terms of occupation. But one of the my most unexpected experiences this past week was watching Frederick Wiseman’s latest institutional observatory documentary City Hall and seeing my other non-film life as a public servant on screen for four and a half hours.
The world of stakeholder meetings and budget discussions, community functions and office dynamics is more often than not the world of comedy (Working Dog’s Utopia being the best, if you ask me). But here Wiseman captures the daily grind and ticking realities of what goes into making a city—in this case Boston—keep moving with steely realism and refinement...
City Hall, which played TIFF before its current screening period at NYFF, is almost Wiseman’s longest film. Only 1989’s Near Death has it beat, and by a full 90 minutes. As ever, he captures the routines, discussions and moments of his chosen institution. Another filmmaker (one who wouldn’t be out there making 4.5-hour movies while in their 90s) would probably be content to just follow Mayor Martin J. Walsh as he gives speeches to war veterans, stumps for the city as the best in the world for jobs growth or celebrate a world championship for the Red Sox; Wiseman is not them. He is wise to send his camera out beyond the walls of the city hall, observing interior public housing meetings, lively community discussions about legal marijuana dispensaries in poor neighborhoods, school board meetings about class sizes, immigrant cooking classes, a garbage collection route and much more. He does so with minimal intrusion and unfussy camerawork work as usual, allowing them to unfold over long slabs of time.
Interspersed throughout these sequences are rather gorgeously shot moments of city life, capturing Boston’s architecture both old and new. There are even abstract shots like a brief serene moment inside a greenhouse, a (trust me on this) sand storage box that is rattled by gale-force winds, or a Holocaust memorial shrouded in steam. The sounds of traffic often carry on into the meeting rooms, highlighting the city’s ever-moving verve. Although I have never visited Boston, I appreciated the opportunity to see a city like this presented not through the lens of big, dramatic moments, but rather the conference rooms and the call centers that ultimately keep it pumping. I recognised much of it, and especially without having been into the office for six months, felt strangely calmed and soothed by it.
But that’s what Wiseman often does so well. He nestles in and allows the stories to unfold naturally and with a careful ease. Wiseman’s films are so often built around the mass gathering of humans from lecture halls to libraries and Central Park. If the global lockdowns that have resulted in 2020 mean that City Hall is the last film for the 92-year-old legend, then it’s a fitting finale.
City Hall is screening from 8pm tonight, but is currently sold out. It will be released in November.
Oscar chances: Wiseman got his most vocal support across his enviable 2000s run of National Gallery, At Berkeley, Ex Libris and most prominently In Jackson Heights (all four appeared on my best of the decade list, too). It was a run of films that no doubt helped him get his career achievement Honorary Oscar. But if they didn’t go for any of those films then the time may have unfortunately passed. Especially since four-and-a-half hours is a big ask for Academy members.
Reader Comments (2)
I was introduced to Wiseman by Ex LIbris. A movie I love so much I've watched it like a dozen times. I unfortunately haven't been able to catch any of his others but I'll definitely keep an eye out for this.
Hi Sarah, if you have access to Kanopy (free with an affiliated library card), you can watch all of Wiseman's films there. I agree with EX LIBRIS, it's probably my favourite of his films that i have seen and I ranked it in the top ten of my best docs of the decade list.