The City
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Movie Reviews of The City
Movie Review: La Ciudad
Summary: 5 Stars
"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.
Movie Review: La Ciudad Review
Summary: 5 Stars
La ciudad is an extraordinary movie to watch. This movie deals with the life of immigrants and the struggles they must go through in order to survive this cruel life. The movies first starts off at a photo studio where the photographer takes photos of immigrants and as the photographer zooms into the person and takes the photo: the life of the one taking a photo begins to arise. The first part deals with the fact that employers make promises they can't keep as far as the pay they offer and the immigrants have to deal with it because some pay is better than no pay. Sometimes even some pay can cause someone something more valuable, their own lives. The second part deals with being lost in a new place, an immigrant that is. Francisco is in search of his uncle and wanders into a party. At the party he is luck to meet someone from the same town as he and who has a generous heart, who offers him a place to stay. The next morning in order to do a good deed, he goes out to buy food. Francisco goes to the store and upon his return he finds himself lost. Everything seems the same from the outside and he becomes scared but there's nothing he can do now. Then there's the part where a homeless man tries to enroll his daughter in school and couldn't. The school asked for a receipt or a bill as proof of address but since he didn't have any, they little girl cannot be enrolled even if she does live in the city. Finally, the part where a real crises arises and a mother is pushed to the limits for her child. The employers promised and promised a pay, week after week, but never did. Until a mother brakes down and the rest of her fellow co-workers join into her struggle. All these story in one way or another relate to many if not all immigrants and the struggles they are faced with. In addition to the stories something that is symbolic in the movie is that its in black and white. This makes it clear to the viewers that not everything is "de color de rosa". In other words not everything in pretty in color. Plus when people imagine New York, they think glamour, lights and wealth; this movie has none of these things. It truly shows the other side of the story, doesn't it?Movie Review: La Cidad Review Arlen H.
Summary: 5 Stars
What I enjoyed most about La Ciudad was their unique approach of narrating short stories through pictures. It is said that a picture is worth 1000 words however, watching this movie has helped me understand that there is a greater story behind each picture it is worth more than words. Each picture does not stand for itself, but it holds a moment in time. To some a picture can represent love, happiness, or life. For example, Ana the women whose daughter was terribly sick and her employers had not paid her four weeks. Yet they told her "maybe next week" when she asked for the money for her daughter's operation. To Ana she had nothing more than a picture, to remember her daughter. The picture was Ana's source of both happiness and life. It was her daughter that Ana worked hard for to support, even if they lived in a different country it was her little angel that kept her determined to work everyday.
They showed four short stories of struggles that immigrants face. In each of the stories a reoccurring theme was evolved around children. At times the child in the story was illustrated through a picture, other times they played a more crucial part of their parent's lives. Dulce who was Luis's daughter was a great help to her father while he tried to make money as best as he could she stayed near him at all times. I think the importance of showing children throughout the movie was to show the audience what happens to immigrants documented or undocumented effects their children severely. As we saw Dulce was not allowed to get education because her father did not have a telephone number or receipt of rent. That was not an exaggeration, it's common that children of immigrants must stop their education due to undocumentation or to help support the family and must therefore work at a young age.
I enjoyed the movie for its unique approach and the realism behind each story. Although it was sad, it showed true stories that everyone could learn from.
Movie Review: La Ciudad
Summary: 5 Stars
La Ciudad is an expressive film which allows people to see what immigrants, especially illegal immigrants, have to go through in order to survive in the United States and the struggles they go through to get there. La Ciudad tells a few different stories of immigrant families. Although these immigrants are so different, they have more similarities than one could imagine. La Ciudad shows the struggles immigrants go through such as working hard and long hours with little or no pay wondering when their checks will come, the struggle to survive, trying to give their children good education, and most of all, the struggles of living apart from their families and loved ones.
La Ciudad is filmed in a narrative perspective. Each different story starts with a family or individual taking a picture, and with a snap of a picture, a new story begins. Each picture taken captures each individual immigrant, and although different, all seem to have similar situations and share the same struggles and hardships. The pictures that are taken are all families have left to be remembered by their families. La Ciudad is filmed in black and white which helps to show how immigrants' lives are far from colorful. This aspect also shows that their lives are much more dark and depressing than anyone unfamiliar would know. Viewing this movie in black and white also emphasizes the slums of New York which is barely seen or recognized. La Ciudad also focuses on children a lot. This is possibly to emphasize that immigration affects every person in a family, regardless of age. Overall La Ciudad shows that immigrants tend to live their lives looking through glass windows; the opportunities are there, but for immigrants they seem impossible to reach. La Ciudad is an excellent movie which allows people to see the struggles which immigrants, illegal and legal, go through upon immigrating.
Movie Review: The City of lost dreams
Summary: 5 Stars
La Ciudad, directed by David Riker, comments on the presence of illegal immigrants in urban settings through a series of stories. Each story begins with the protagonists getting their pictures taken in a photo shop. Quickly we learn everything is not as it seems on the surface. As they stand before idyllic backdrops, wearing their best clothes and a smile, their realities come to life with the click of the camera. José, the first protagonist in the series of stories, is lucky enough to get a job for the day, but at what cost? Lost and stranded on the work site and in their lives, the workers carry on, even with the knowledge that their lives are as worthless and ill-fated as José's. Francisco thinks he has found his American dream in Maria, a young girl who shares with him a past and a longing for home. Maria has felt trapped in America, while Francisco has been lost until he found Maria. After a small mishap, Francisco loses his delicate sense of home, getting lost in the proverbial city once again, trapped by harsh realities. Dulce cannot attend school, because she is without a home. As illegal immigrants, they are not citizens, and as homeless people, they are not residents. "Every child has the right," according to the official story of the nation-state, while in reality the law acts as an obstacle to that statement. Upon hearing of her young daughter's illness, Ana is faced with a double-bind: she can either continue to work for no pay in the hopes of eventually getting paid, or demand her pay and risk getting fired. Like the other protagonists, she is desperate and stuck, and even when others protest on her behalf, the reality that they are all replaceable complicates a moment that could have been a moment of strength through unity. In the end, they are forever outsiders looking in, lost among the fringes of society.