{"id":91,"date":"2008-01-05T17:33:44","date_gmt":"2008-01-05T22:33:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/?p=91"},"modified":"2021-08-26T09:26:29","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T14:26:29","slug":"quiet-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/05\/quiet-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Quiet City"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aaron Katz\u2019s Quiet City<\/em> and Ronald Bronstein\u2019s Frownland <\/em>represent a vivid study in contrasts. Frownland<\/em>, with its cramped apartments\u00a0and cast of social misfits, presents a\u00a0hellish vision\u00a0of urban life\u00a0in Brooklyn. Aaron Katz\u2019s Quiet City<\/em>, on the other hand, somehow manages to turn Brooklyn into a semi-pastoral landscape by interspersing shots of nature \u2013 from changing autumn leaves and tree branches against blue sky and puffy clouds to spectacular sunsets. Even the subway ride and traffic lights of the city at night are rendered as colorful abstractions. While the film will remind viewers of Richard Linklater\u2019s Before Sunrise,<\/em> along with\u00a0work by Andrew Bujalski, Joe Swanberg, and David Gordon Green, Katz successfully\u00a0navigates the terrain of cinematic influences and references by creating a film that embodies a sensibility very much his own.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never been a huge fan of Before Sunrise<\/em>, largely because Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy still seem too much like professional actors despite Linklater\u2019s use of naturalism. As characters, they try so hard to impress each other that it invariably results in missed connections. Jamie (Erin Fisher) and Charlie (Cris Lankenau), the two young protagonists of Quiet City<\/em>, on the contrary, don\u2019t really try at all. They\u2019re not obsessed with getting into each other\u2019s pants for one thing, but seem more interested in just hanging out and getting to know one another.<\/p>\n

The story is remarkably simple. Jamie arrives in Brooklyn to meet a friend, Samantha, who, due to cell-phone problems, ends up leaving her stranded. Jamie runs into Charlie in the subway station, asks for directions to a diner, and the two end up spending the next twenty-four hours together. Although scripted, there\u2019s not really much of a plot in the conventional sense. Instead we experience a series of episodic narrative incidents. The two break into Samantha\u2019s apartment, have a foot race in the park, and visit a friend, Adam (Joe Swanberg), to retrieve Charlie\u2019s hat, but actually forget to take it. They later go to an art opening and a party afterwards.<\/p>\n

Neither Jamie nor Charlie appear to have much drive or ambition. We learn at the art opening that Jamie works at an Applebee\u2019s restaurant in Atlanta, while Charlie has quit his job and wishes he could find a way to get paid for doing absolutely nothing. Jamie\u00a0is extremely attractive. She has a certain directness in manner, but\u00a0often disguises it by raising the inflection of her voice at the end of a sentence, so that what begins as an assertion somehow gets converted into a question. Jamie also has the nervous habit of playing with her hair. Charlie, on the other hand, speaks much less, and manages to be vague about just about everything \u2013 the taste of wine or if he\u2019s fast runner \u2013 but he exudes a certain puppy-like charm. At the diner, it comes out that Charlie\u2019s ex-girlfriend used to like to go there. In response to Jamie\u2019s\u00a0questions, Charlie indicates that she\u2019s now in Alaska, but\u00a0later mentions that she previously lived in Florida. Charlie offers to let Jamie stay at his place, adding that “my couch is open.” Jamie\u2019s first response is to laugh at the blatant implications, but she accepts his gracious offer. Nevertheless, Jamie is\u00a0pretty flirtatious, even if Charlie appears not to notice.<\/p>\n

When they get to his apartment, Jamie offers to give the shaggy-haired Charlie a haircut. Afterwards, he complains about feeling itchy and takes a shower. We fully expect Jamie to join him, but after he finishes, Charlie finds her fast asleep on his bed. He might lie down next to her, but instead\u00a0ends up sleeping on the couch. The reasons for Jamie\u2019s reticence become evident the next morning when she gets a phone call, presumably from her boyfriend in Atlanta. Jamie tells him what\u2019s happened and openly admits that she\u2019s just slept at some guy\u2019s apartment. He hangs up. Jamie calls right back, and makes it clear that “I\u2019m not doing anything wrong,” though it\u2019s apparent from the tone of their brief conversation that they have issues.<\/p>\n

While sitting together on the floor of Samantha’s apartment, Charlie confesses to being cowardly. He tells her that he has a tendency to withdraw from relationships rather than break them off \u2013 he doesn\u2019t want to take responsibility for the other person\u2019s feelings. Jamie admits that she\u2019s mostly dated people liked him, but that in her latest relationship she\u2019s turning into him. As they continue to discuss relationships, Charlie says something about hoping to grow up, so as not to freak out and feel trapped, “and just kind of actually go with it.” The camera pans from a side view of Jamie to a reaction shot of Charlie, as she responds, “Well this is my first time feeling like that.” He nods his head in agreement. The camera cuts back to\u00a0Jamie, who\u00a0stares directly at him.<\/p>\n

After Jamie beats Charlie in a foot race at the park, Jamie invites Charlie to her high school friend\u2019s art opening later that evening. While in the neighborhood, Charlie suggests stopping at Adam\u2019s place to get his hat. There\u2019s a very funny scene where Adam at first refuses to buzz them in. Once upstairs, Adam complains that he hasn\u2019t heard from Charlie in awhile. It turns out that Adam has gotten engaged after being together with a woman for seven years. The fact that Adam\u2019s getting married suggests a level of adult maturity that Jamie and Charlie speculated about earlier. The two return to Charlie\u2019s apartment, where Jamie\u00a0takes a shower \u2013 a second opportunity for something to happen. After she finishes, Charlie is now the one who’s fallen asleep.<\/p>\n

At the art opening, Charlie runs into a hyperactive friend named Kyle (Tucker Stone), who also suggests that he hasn\u2019t seen Charlie for several weeks, reinforcing what we\u2019ve learned about him from Adam. Kyle, in fact, manages to ridicule both Jamie and Charlie. He playfully embarrasses Charlie in front of Jamie by asking whether Charlie\u2019s still gearing up to move down to Florida to be with a girlfriend. Kyle tells Jamie, “He\u2019s hung up on some girl back in Florida.” “No I\u2019m not,” Charlie insists, looking at Jamie, but Kyle counters, “You talk about her all the time.” It\u2019s clear that Charlie wants him to shut up \u2013 has he been outed, or is Kyle simply mistaken? Whatever the case, Charlie seems to react with genuine embarrassment.<\/p>\n

Jamie\u2019s artist friend, Robin (Sarah Hellman), invites the three of them back to her\u00a0place for an after-party, where we watch the four of them dance to rock music, but we hear non-diegetic piano music instead, which creates a strange effect. As Jamie and Robin lie together in a loft bed, Robin talks candidly about her love life, complaining that she\u2019s been having trouble relating to men sexually. She first seems to indicate that she would prefer passionate sex with someone she didn\u2019t know all that well, but then later tells a story about asking a guy if she could just lie on top on him. Her story suggests the theme of Quiet City<\/em>, namely, that people have a desperate need, not for casual sex, but for real intimacy. Following the party, we see Jamie and Charlie riding alone in an empty subway car. The camera frames them from behind, as Jamie\u2019s head leans into the fold of Charlie\u2019s neck and the two fall asleep. The film ends with a shot of an airplane taking off against an orange-red sky. Although it\u2019s left ambiguous, Quiet City<\/em> suggests that these shared moments of intimacy are, in all likelihood, a temporary solace.<\/p>\n

Quiet City<\/em> primarily works\u00a0because of the palpable chemistry between the two main performers. At one point, Jamie and Charlie improvise a duet on a small electronic keyboard. Their reactions to what they\u2019re playing and the music itself conveys a buoyant energy that carries through the entire film. Katz infuses Quiet City<\/em> with a warm, golden glow of natural and artificial light that continually illuminates the faces of Jamie and Charlie. He mixes artfully composed wide shots that convey a distinct sense of place with a hand-held camera that often zooms in tight to follow the movement of its characters. It\u2019s the most formal and poetic of the mumblecore films I\u2019ve seen to date, which owes much to the outstanding cinematography of Andrew Reed. Already imbued with a certain nostalgia, Quiet City<\/em> creates the uncanny sense of the past unfolding in the present, as if its two characters are already looking back through the filter of memory at what we see transpire.<\/p>\n

Along with Chris Smith\u2019s The Pool<\/em> and three other films, Quiet City<\/em> was recently nominated for the Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award for Best Feature made for under a half-million dollars. Aaron Katz\u2019a two films \u2013 Quiet City<\/em> and Dance Party USA<\/em> (which I still haven\u2019t\u00a0seen) \u2013 will be released together on DVD from Benten Films<\/a> on January 29.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aaron Katz\u2019s Quiet City and Ronald Bronstein\u2019s Frownland represent a vivid study in contrasts. Frownland, with its cramped apartments\u00a0and cast of social misfits, presents a\u00a0hellish vision\u00a0of urban life\u00a0in Brooklyn. Aaron Katz\u2019s Quiet City, on the other hand, somehow manages toRead More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":93,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24,8,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4283,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions\/4283"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}