Detropia (2012)

Too much of everything

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Excellent but underrated film

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

There is nothing new or surprising in Detropia and I was disappointed in that. The film is a hodgepodge of scenes jumping back and forth between a local bar owner, a useless union representative, an urban explorer and some artistic nomads.The continued denial by the unions to accept current economic realities is now just tiring to watch and evokes irritation rather that pathos.The jobs are not going to come back and pay is going to go down. This is the reality and the future and the unions don't want to accept that fact. In the end, they lose their jobs completely because they would not accept the realities of the current global economy and compromise on a new contract. Their strategy didn't work to well and now another group of people are unemployed.The best part of the film is the bar owner, who despite the loss of his autoworker customers, is still chugging along bringing in his loyal neighborhood customers for some fantastic jazz and food. He is a very nice, educated and thoughtful man who the filmmakers should have followed around exclusively for a year and made the film about Detroit through his eyes, every scene with him is a highlight. I just wanted to reach out and give him and his wife a big hug. Not out of pity but to thank them for hanging in there and being such wonderful people.The whole part about the Opera was out of place here (and just kinda weird). The only thing tying the Opera to Detroit is the fact the automakers financially support it (and probably always will). I doubt that any of the folks directly impacted by job losses and decaying neighborhoods attend the Opera and the Opera audience is probably 95% suburban whites who live outside the city limits.I would rather have seen this time spent on the bar owner or on other residents faced with possible relocation and what their thoughts are about it. The one irate woman at the town hall accusing Mayor Bing of trying to enforce segregation in Detroit (how is that possible when it already is?) is certainly not the only opinion of residents stuck out in the middle of abandoned neighborhoods. I think most folks would welcome the opportunity to move into a better neighborhood filled with life and city services and public transportation, hospitals, schools etc. I would jump on that chance in a minute if I were in that situation.I would have liked to have known more about the urban explorer, she was not flushed out well. I think it is so cool that she explores the abandoned areas and videos her adventures, I would love to do that! but I would like to have known what her purpose is for doing so. Is she working on a project of her own? I would like to have known some more back story on her.Finally the young couple who picked Detroit because of its cheap rent and urban blight to work on their art. This is one part of the story that showed real promise for the cities future. Imagine if artists from all over the world came to Detroit and formed a massive art colony. This one population could produce massive positive change. I wish their story would have been flushed out further as well.Detropia is worth watching, the visuals are fantastic and I wish it would have been about 4 hours long, I would have watched it all! I think the filmmakers tried to be too artsy with it instead of just giving us the story straight up. I hope to visit Detroit someday and see it for myself before all of the history is torn down. 7 out of 10

This film is interesting to watch, especially the tour through the ruins of Detroit, a fascinating graphic representation of the collapse of a major American city. The haunted landscape with its empty houses and buildings (often very large buildings) evokes emotions of loss and decline, both sad and romantic at the same time. I was thoroughly entertained while I was watching those scenes. This documentary also interviews some of the residents of those devastated areas, and while those survivors are likable and interesting in themselves, they seem to have little insight into what's going on around them or why. This video provides a paucity of information about what brought about those alarming conditions, instead focusing on allowing the pictures to tell the story. There are a couple of major omissions that are quite glaring, as if the videographers just had to avert their eyes from the truth because of ideology or just a personal aversion. First is the alarming crime rate. Only about 21% of the homicides are solved. There is no indication here about how dangerous Detroit has become. Another omission is the abysmal condition of the public schools. Without decent schools there is literally no hope for the kids still having to live in the Detroit area. My understanding is that it is not due to lack of money because Detroit schools receive more per pupil than the national average. Only 25% of high school students graduate. A young student is more likely to wind up in prison than in college. A third glaring omission is the fact that the city has been ruled by Democratic politicians for 50 years. The city's problems are to a large extent the result of bad politics, misspent money and cronyism. Without a viable opposition who was there to keep the politicians honest? I don't mind that much if the documentary was just meant to show the wasteland that was once Detroit as a series of visual images for their own sake. However there seems to be something under the surface that is hinted at but never developed. Why did Detroit take such a nosedive in the last decades? I would have preferred a more in-depth analysis. Why couldn't Detroit adapt to changes in the global market? Auto plants in other parts of the US are doing okay. Did the unions kill the auto industry in Detroit? This is a question that is never asked in "Detropia." Perhaps because the filmmakers didn't want to face the answer.

An opera singer calmly walks thru a large room inside a beautiful piece of architecture, a deserted and dilapidated building being devoured by nature. His beautiful song bounces off walls littered with graffiti. Broken windows, piles of rubble, lost jobs, a city in decay, nowhere to go but up, welcome to Detropia.This movie briefly takes us around Detroit and into the hearts & minds of its sparse population. We see that the only thing surviving and thriving is the indomitable spirit of its citizens. Most documentaries take the approach of inundating us with information. Don't expect to talk to economic experts or politicians, we talk to the ordinary citizen. We watch them live with their difficult day to day existence as they watch the city decay around them, all the while trying to understand complex causes to a complex problem. Solutions seems so distant all they can hope for is a miracle.Detropia shows the viewer a microcosm of the human condition through conversations with ordinary folks amidst a sea of ruins. The lovely cinematography continuously compares and contrasts beauty with ugliness, despair with hope. We see small flowers growing among the rubble, a bird rests upon a heap of garbage, people smiling and clinging to what little joy they have as they struggle to make ends meet.This is a wonderful and calm film that will require the viewer to have patience and be in a sombre mood. Expect sadness tinged with brief glimpses of hope and the answer to the question of whether your cup is half full or empty. I'm left with the feeling that the spirit may be strong in Detroit's citizens, but the realities of the world are slowly crushing them. Let us hope the spirit conquers all.

Saw this documentary at its Toronto screening - wasn't very impressed by the content. By carefully selecting the interviewees and the target demographic, the film maker somehow tends to sensationalise the issue of the decline in Detroit's population.Most of the characters that appear in documentary are African-American, work in auto industry and appear to come from a lower middle class background. Somehow the filmmaker conveniently chooses to ignore the middle class who might also be affected by the downturn in auto-industry but is still surviving.However, the main points that sticks out like a sore thumb is the American hubris. The refusal to acknowledge the fact that Americans no longer rule the auto-manufacturing sector. A character in the movie riles about how Chinese can produce a car at almost half the price of an American car and how this will impact the car industry, not acknowledging the fact that the Japanese has already caused the decline of American car industry.The mayor of the city comes with a novel idea of moving the suburban population to the inner city and using the available land for farming. But that idea is ridiculed by the characters appearing in the movie. When you are drowning and somebody throws you a lifeline, you accept it. Change is an inevitable part of life and it is time Americans accept it.I am not sure if the film makers idea was to raise sympathy for the characters affected by the decline of auto industry, but if that was the case, they seem to hardly deserve any sympathy.P.S. - After visiting IMDb, I realised that this is the same film maker who gave us the wonderful "Jesus Camp". While I enjoyed "Jesus Camp", "Detropia" failed to impress me.