City Hall

Movie has no open or closed captions for benefit of deaf and hearing impaired viewers.

City Hall (2020) is a documentary about the Boston mayor's office, directed by Frederick Wiseman. It follows Mayor Marty Walsh through his many meetings and conferences, and then shows us much, much more.

Be advised--this is a 4 1/2 hour movie. We watched it at home over three evenings. Every scene is so interesting that it's not a movie that you want to fast forward. If you're not up for a long, long binge, watch it in two or three parts, as we did.

Mayor Walsh is the "star" of the documentary, but Wiseman has shown us many other people carrying out meetings and activities that we don't even think about when we hear "City Hall." These include zoning, animal care, and the city's help line.

Wiseman is a genius, and any documentary he's directed is worth seeing. I think City Hall is one of the great ones. The movie has a solid 7.4 IMDb rating, but I thought it was even better than that, and rated it 10.

P.S. As I write this review, Mayor Walsh has been nominated by President Biden for Secretary of Labor. His confirmation is in progress. I assume he won't be Mayor of Boston for many more days. This makes the movie even more compelling.

TIFF 2020 14

City Hall

This is Frederick Wiseman's latest documentary which runs about 4 and half hours and revovles around the government of Boston city in Massachusetts. The film explores the city hall building in Boston and tries to provide us with a comprehensive look of how it operates, what activities take form inside and what role it plays in term of running the city.

There are some very interesting shots in this film, notably crushing a couple queen sized mattresses in the garbage truck, a man reporting and discussing a rat infestation problem in his house, some guys trying to negotiate the illegal parking tickets they got charges with and etc. For the most part however, we are seeing and following the city mayor Marty Walsh along with Wiseman's camera as he goes through various sessions of meetings with his deputies, or takes part of City's gatherings and gives motivational speeches.

This is a very long film to watch, probably best to watch in two sittings, but I found all scenes to be interesting so I'm not sure how this could be shorter or what parts should be cut from it.

What a self-indulgent offering. He just let the camera go with no apparent effort at reining in these blowhard politicians. If he could make a point in 2 minutes, he'd let the scenes go on for ten. You think sitting in a meeting where you have an interest in the outcome can be boring? Just wait til you are watching these party hacks sitting around a table and droning on about subjects that really don't interest you. I understand this building is being torn down which I guess was all the reason Wiseman needed to make this documentary. Fine, put it in the archives as a permanent record of its role in the city but don't expect anyone but the participants to want to watch this.

I was going to write off the film, and then that full queen sized bed and BBQ got crushed.

It is fly on the wall, but that fly really landed on a boring wall. Hours of people talking about how they want to meet people halfway and develop community based solutions to the needs of marginalized communities with consultation and communications based on meeting in a community oriented setting...

There are interesting moments, but it just feels like a marathon. If you work in white collar job this just feels like being dragged into a work meeting with no written agenda.

I'm not really sure who this is for, if you're involved and into municipal government you'll probably stop watching because it feels like the boring bit of the work. If you don't like municipal government then you probably won't enjoy watching government employees edging 4 hours closer to their pension.

If you live in any city, you can access city council meetings and consultations online. I'd just use the 4 hours to learn about some park or bridge or development going on near you. You'll get the gist and you'll come out of it knowing more about your own town.