Jim Jarmusch's Night on Earth is a trans-global taxicab comedy which strings together five different vignettes in five different cities, each observing in acerbic and penetrating detail the singular relationship between passenger and driver as they speed towards their destination.

Juxtaposition is the crucial structuring device in the film as Jarmusch records one moment in one night in five locations Los Angeles, New York, Rome, Paris and Helsinki. In each of the cities the narrative unfolds in a taxi; this both captures the transitory condition of urban experience - unpredictable encounters and journeys - and foregrounds what is usually regarded as insignificant detail, the everyday is central to this film. In interview, Jarmusch emphasizes this point:

"So in a way the content of this film is made up of things that would usually be taken out. It's similar to what I like about Stranger than Paradise or Down by Law, the moments between what we think of as significant"
(Interview with Peter Keogh - 'Home and Away' Sight and Sound 2(4) 1991: 9)

Enterprisingly cast throughout, the quintet's opening L.A. story features Winona Ryder as an indomitable, single-minded cabbie deeply unimpressed by high-powered Hollywood agent Gena Rowlands, while Armin Mueller-Stahl tackles a lighter role as an amiable East German immigrant cabbie being given a lesson in Brooklyn street wisdom by Spike Lee veteran Giancarlo Esposito in the New York segment. The Paris section show-cases Beatrice Dalle as a blind girl who "opens the eyes" of prejudiced driver Isaach de Bankole ( who first appeared in Claire Denis post-colonial study Chocolat); Rome is represented by Roberto Benigni and the kind of scabrous cabbie's tales which give his priestly fare (Paolo Bonacelli) a heart attack; and we end the evening in Helsinki - where else? - with a drunken cab-full of Aki Kaurismaki regulars making hilarious efforts to escalate the dramatics of each other's tragedy-laced chronicles of Scandinavian gloom.

The basic connection is the relationship between driver and passenger that each story explores, though the segments are also linked in other, less obvious, ways. As with the best short stories, the segments are less about plot - very little actually happens - than they are about character, dialogue, and mood. Jarmusch is adroit in controlling these elements, and clearly has an intuitive rapport with his cast - who bring the proceedings to three-dimensional life, mining the script for humour and coaxing social and political overtones from Jarmusch's sparse dialogue. All this is perfectly complemented by Jarmusch's moody evocation of the five night-shrouded urban settings.

Jarmusch is not interested in making each section into a definite "short-story" with that obvious configuration. There are no conclusions. The concentration is on character and the relationships that unfold, in the Los Angeles piece, between a tattooed, gum-chewing, chain-smoking young driver and an elegant executive who wants to cast her in a movie. "I've got my life all mapped out," says Corky (Winona Ryder), who hopes to eventually qualify as a mechanic. "There must be lotsa girls who want to be in the movies. Not me." The film doesn't pass judgement, it simply reports an opinion.

To accentuate the characterization of the urban environment as "other", it appears that Jarmusch reproduces and proliferates images of outsiders/immigrants/women as in-excess of the city these are then focused to detail the narrative's otherness. For example the narrative fluidity of the film rotates upon endless loops as one immigrant driver melts into another and as Rosie Perez mutates into Beatrice Dalle. No one has a secure, safe place in Jarmusch's city - and there is no desire or nostalgia for such a place - there is no sense of ownership of the cityscape, hence the concentration on immigrant identity and women. Night on Earth is an offbeat, original examination of concepts of home, belonging, solitude and strangeness. As in previous films Jarmusch continues his structural approach to narrative by replaying essentially the same story in different locations. Once again, his intuitive feeling of cultural difference and his operating outside of the "us" and "them" dichotomy is reflected by a narrative construction that emphasizes simultaneity and the notion that there is no single experience or perspective. The abstract quality of Night on Earth becomes apparent as the recurring framework is animated by new details and nuances. What energizes the film is the tension and myriad associations evoked in the continuous sequence of repeating slightly varied narratives.

Although shot in high-tone colour like its Memphis-set predecessor Mystery Train, Night on Earth's audacious Tom Wait's soundtrack and energetic "mugging" courtesy of maestro Benigni ensure that echoes of writer-director-producer Jarmusch's deftly understated and distinctively monochrome early works resonate throughout. Here the diligently positioned static shots and chunks of black screen may be absent, but as Jarmusch's formal approach diversifies, his powers of human insight have appreciably widened in scope. Part fairy-tale, part-noir mood-piece, Night on Earth both celebrates and derives comedy from its characters' eccentricities. If humour plays a greater part in counteracting the tendency towards style than in earlier films, Jarmusch nonetheless remains true to an experimental aesthetic, with innovative editing, stories deprived of conventional climatic action, and moody or hyper-animated mannerisms that continually undercut "realism". Jarmusch's films are constructed from scenes that are usually neglected in conventional narrative structure. He has explained in interview: "Say a guy breaks up with his girl over the phone and he decides to go to see her and we cut from him leaving his apartment to him entering hers." That's missing the essential elements according to Jarmusch. He wants to show the man on the way to her apartment, show "how he was feeling, what he did and how he got there." (Interview with Geoff Andrew - Guardian Mon. November 15 1999)

Jarmusch focuses on miniature, transitory exchanges between eccentric characters to comment on themes such as stardom and "reality" in Hollywood, the cultural density of the New York population, preconceptions regarding disability, and morality. In its complete arc the film balances between serious contentions in its juxtaposition of a polymorphic arrangement of the elements of reality and the mental dynamic one perceives as an undercurrent, and light-heartedness, as it elides from one intriguing detail to the next.

As always, in Night on Earth, it is the unpredictable and individualistic characters, the mundane yet bizarrely striking situations, that differentiate a Jarmusch film - as well as the soundtrack, constantly beautifully restrained and effective. There is Jarmusch's customary unconventional absurdity apparent in the New York instalment, yet the poignant comment on cultural blinkeredness in the Paris piece and the extraordinary way in which the closing Finnish drama both acknowledges Kaurismaki's individualistic style and achieves a deadpan, funny and simultaneously deeply emotive atmosphere, make Night on Earth Jarmusch's most intelligent, sensitive and complete film.

Jarmusch's films share a visionary, insightful quality, while maintaining an understated honesty and lightness. Jarmusch's attitude to narrative comes across as defiantly non-dramatic and non-explanatory. Although a student with Nicholas Ray whose work principally espouses direct, explicit and literal dramaturgy, Jarmusch's aesthetic is oblique, vague and full of hard-to-decode allusions. However, he displays concentrated insight as the idiosyncratic illustrator of credible characters who are usually relegated to the margins of mainstream movies, and a film-maker of refreshingly hybrid movies that resist conventional categorisation. His visual sense is superb, his control of atmosphere strong, and greater recognition has not compromised his highly individual style.

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