Detropia (2012) Reviews

• Not going to negotiate ... what?

  ferguson-62012-12-02

  Greetings again from the darkness. Admittedly, I am tough on documentaries. My expectations are quite high. Reason being, documentary filmmakers need not be burdened with fluffy entertainment requirements. Instead, they can tell a story, debate an issue, or expose a wrong. Wasted opportunities annoy me. Have you heard anything about the economic hardships in the city of Detroit? Of course you have. It's been a story for more than two decades. So a documentary "exposing" the hardships in Detroit should at least offer a different perspective, debate options, or discuss the challenges of progress. Otherwise, it's a wasted opportunity, which is what we have here. The film is beautifully photographed and very well put together. It's just missing a reason to exist. It's a clump of different pieces that don't fit and provide little insight. We get a clueless local union president who is clinging to the past and offering no help to his constituents. We get some obscure video blogger whose main credentials seem to be that she lives in Detroit and has her own camera. We get a couple of guys sitting on a front porch making fun of any efforts by local officials to develop solutions. There seems to have been a very narrow focus on choosing who to interview. At least Tommy Stevens, a local bar owner, is an interesting guy to follow around. He holds out hope that GM will open a Chevy Volt plant and spur business at his club, so he can re-hire his cook. His hopes are dashed when he attends a local auto show and finds out that China has an electric car that at a significantly lower price than Chevy. He recalls the days that stubborn US automakers refused to acknowledge upstart Honda in the US. We are offered brief glimpses into some type of town hall meeting and the absolute rejection by the union of the "last" offer from American Axle. We are shown a few clips from inside the Detroit Opera, which the Big 3 automakers continue to finance. Lastly, we are introduced to a couple of young artists, who are part of a growing trend of relocations to inner city Detroit to take advantage of the low rents and low housing costs. All of the above are interesting enough, but again, it's been two decades and we only get one angry lady spouting off about Mayor Dave Bing's seemingly appropriately creative idea of consolidating the outlying areas into a smaller geographic area, so the city can provide services for its citizens and start the process of healing and growing. There seem to be two real issues worth analyzing. First is the unwillingness of so many to accept that change has already occurred ... so fighting change is a lost cause. Your city is broke. No need to make things worse. Secondly, looking into the true cause of the downturn could lead to interesting discussions of greed. Corporate greed as well as the greed of the people. The Chinese can make a car (and TV's, washing machines, etc) so much cheaper because they are not holding on to our standard of living. Detroit has been called the birthplace of the middle class, but just what is that definition today? These are some of the discussions that need to be had. Just one more look at houses being torn down and empty hotels ... all with the shiny GM towers in the background ... is just a re-hash of what we already know. So yes, the wasted opportunity has me annoyed.

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• Nice pictures, short on information.

  celr2013-05-24

  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.

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• 86 Minutes of Why Bother

  JoeZilch2013-04-23

  I watched this flick because people kept telling me it was shot well and it really wasn't. I've seen better urban spelunking videos (or even photos) come out of media censor friendly China. This film looks like it was shot without a budget (like most documentaries, that's not meant to be a strike against it) but also without any permits. I'm not really one to complain about that unless it seems to show in your work. The somewhat bland videography aside the point of this documentary is to talk about and expose people to the problem in the "D". With no history. No context. No real explanations at all. People used to make cars there and now they don't so we get to listen to people whine about how bad things have gotten in the city. I'm not looking for a piece that might match my opinions but you can't take a movie talking about economic hardships in Detroit seriously without discussing pension liabilities, government mandates, unionism in general or any other myriad economic problems that lead businesses to flee to other states or countries and consumers to buy cheaper goods. We hear a lot about China. Nothing about Ohio where cars are still being made. Or any of the "Right to Work" states. I'm not advocating here for "right to work", I'm pointing out that the filmmakers don't even discuss the very economic issues that the "Rust Belt" has been grappling with for more than a generation. Art snobs can afford to move in so we'll show them taking photos and being all artsy, that will take the place of any real expose or discussion. There is a scene in this flick, seriously, where a union refuses to negotiate with a company that is threatening to move the last of their plants to Mexico. This isn't a bluff or standoff, this is a take-it-or-leave-it issue. The union "doesn't even vote on it" because they "have nothing to lose". Can we discuss THAT mentality for a second? How do they have nothing to lose? We're told the plant closed and nothing else of note. Did they all go on unemployment? Why was the plant closed? We see the union meeting with their "greed" talking point but what was the reason from the company? We don't even get the tried and true documentary trope of "nobody from company 'x' would talk to us". I watch a lot of documentaries as they help my wife sleep from boredom and they keep me up at night seething with rage. This was just another in a long line of "what a cool idea" that quickly turned into "86 minutes of movie, 4 hours of my life wasted because now I'm on IMDb complaining about it".

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• Detropia - Filling Broken Places With Beauty

  elijah-davidson2012-02-12

  Detropia is a documentary focusing on the city of Detroit. The film explores the lives of a few of the city's residents including an auto worker's union leader, a night club owner, a blogger/waitress, the city's mayor, a young artist couple, and a few yon men who salvage scrap metal from dilapidated and destroyed buildings. The film lacks a strong narrative push as a whole and in the lives of the individuals it examines. Instead, Detropia acts as a snapshot of the city as a whole zeroing in on the problems facing the dying megalopolis. I adore documentaries like Detropia that focus on a place more than a specific person or problem. I always feel like I'm being allowed to wander the streets and observe the day-to- day lives of the people who inhabit them. It's cinematic people watching, and it's more intimate than I could be in real life. (Wandering city streets and interacting with random people is one of my favorite real life pastimes as well.) I don't think that anything really exists beyond people and relationships. Every city, government, company, church, or civic organization is really just a collection of people mutually committed to perpetuating their relationships with one another, and so I seek the truth of a place in the lives of the people who live there. Detropia doesn't really offer any solutions to Detroit's many problems. Instead, it focuses intently on what is broken and on the small glimmers of hope shining in the lives of the people trying to ensure the city's survival. I was particularly moved by the twenty-something artists who have moved into the abandoned city center to try to fill that decrepit place with life. In an obviously staged, but nonetheless poignant moment of the film, an opera singer explores an abandoned, graffiti-ridden train station. Standing in the main hall, he begins to sing, and his voice inundates that broken place with beauty which floods out across the city. I'm a Christian, and filling what's broken with beauty, making all things new - that's how I understand the gospel of Christ. For me, Detropia leaves no doubt that Detroit needs people committed to that kind of gospel to fill it with beauty again.

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• Clueless

  topidea2013-08-20

  "Detropia" is a voyeuristic snapshot of Detroit as it is today but offers little insight into how things got so bad so fast. Its creators, like most of America, seem to accept Detroit's condition as the inevitable result of auto companies migrating out of the city. They entirely miss the point that citizens of Detroit have made poor decisions that CAUSED the auto companies, as well as most of the hard-working population and the good teachers, to abandon the town. What everyone misses is that Detroit's decline began at the height of the U.S. auto boom, when everyone was doing so well here that they thought they could afford to give everything to everyone and it would last forever. Some landmarks: -- The big 3 agree to strike demands that are obviously unsustainable including pensions, wages and even a guarantee that workers will get full salaries when they're laid off! -- The white majority, wishing to be "progressive", elects the first black mayoral candidate that comes along...never mind that he's not qualified, hates white people and is blatantly corrupt (Colman Young) -- The same white liberals move out of the city, taking their limousines with them -- Detroit enacts a City Income Tax, driving the remaining productive people and businesses out of town. This money is supposed to be for education but ends up in the pockets of school administration, union leaders and mayoral appointees -- The (now) black majority continues to re-elect Coleman Young for 20 years because he promises freebies for all -- Like a vulture sweeping in for the remains, Quame Kilpatrick gets elected mayor and sucks up every dime left in the Detroit treasury These are all DECISIONS made by Detroit voters (white and black) that have brought the city to its knees. The directors of Detropia similarly avoid suggesting any CURES for the city. They blame the suburbs for not supporting Detroit when, in fact, surrounding counties have voted many tax millages upon themselves to fund the Detroit Zoo, the Detroit Institute of Arts, etc. In fact, the city has been largely supported by its suburbs and the state and federal governments for many, many years. The appointment of a Financial Manager by the state was an absolute necessity (no one WANTED it). After 50 years of waste and corruption, someone had to become the adult in the room. One of Detropia's directors(dreamily) said on CSPAN this morning: "It does no good to look at the past, we must look forward." (GAG!) I offer this quote: "He who does not learn from the past is doomed to repeat it".

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