Jim Jarmusch's "Night on Earth" is what one could call an international American movie - and therefore almost a contradiction. When normally Americans come to Paris, to Madrid or to Rome, the movies in which they act look like these cities would lie in the US. Not only there is exclusively English spoken, but the actors do not behave as if they were in Europe. Sadly enough, this is even true for Soderberg's "The Good German". The worst that can happen, then, is that Americans try to film European history. I do not watch such movies anymore until Unviersal will have agreed to contract Fredy Murer as director of a new American Western.
Very different are the movies of the world-versatile Jarmusch, a real Odysseus for whom the Greek attribute "polytropos" could not better fit - also what the choice of his movies concerns. Although the situations in the different taxi-drives are acted, they are so good as in real life. In order not to spoil the real pleasure that everybody has who has traveled to the cities in which Jarmusch leads us, I give here only a few hints. Masterfully Armin Müller-Stahl as taxi-driver and clown who looks as if an UFO had abandoned him amidst New York city. His film-name Grokenberger is a nice allusion to Grock, the greatest clown of all times. Jarmusch's humor gets a bit cynic if he chooses exactly Paolo Bonacelli for the role of the priest who dies in the taxi under the "confession" of Roberto Benigni: the same Bonacelli who was in one of the three leading roles in Pasolini's "Salo", a movie that is so full with nausea that people can hardly survive it. To a nice allusion Jarmusch also succeeded in the last episode which shows a cab drive of three drunks in Helsinki. Helsinki is the cinematic seat of whom? Right, of Aki and Mika Kaurismäki. So, the awaken watcher is not too astonished, when the sober taxi driver is called Mika and the deathly drunk passenger Aki. Also a form of reverence of Jarmusch who is a real Global citizen.