{"id":5604,"date":"2012-10-11T16:45:06","date_gmt":"2012-10-11T20:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=5604"},"modified":"2016-11-21T14:49:29","modified_gmt":"2016-11-21T19:49:29","slug":"film-detropia-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=5604","title":{"rendered":"Film: Detropia (2012)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to: <\/strong>Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>D<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Film: Very Good\/ DVD Transfer: \u00a0n\/a \/ DVD Extras: n\/a<\/p>\n

Label: n\/a\u00a0\/ Region: n\/a\u00a0\/\u00a0Released: n\/a<\/p>\n

Genre: Documentary \/ Detroit \/ Urban Decline<\/p>\n

Synopsis: Portrait of Detroit’s inhabitants whose lives are still affected by population flight, a decline in jobs, and dwindling tax base for a city government already struggling to maintain basic services.<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

\u201cExceptionalism needs to be learnerd every day.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady\u2019s film is essentially a cautionary tale about Detroit, Michigan, the car manufacturing heartland which chooses to rest on its laurels of being a major economic hub for millions before it was eclipsed by other cities, and \u00a0swerved from the fastest-growing city in the world (circa 1930) to a horrible case of extreme urban decay.<\/p>\n

With a population documented in the 2010 Census at a hair above 700,000, Detroit is a far cry from its glory days, and Detropia<\/strong> focuses on a set of hand-picked locals who\u2019ve refused to leave and refused to accept defeat when manufacturers beat down unions for cheaper wages only to pack up for cheaper foreign workers while the city struggles with extreme plans to save its urban core.<\/p>\n

Mayor Dave Bing, seen in a council meeting, is well aware that once people reach the wage limits imposed by corporations, they pack up & leave, causing the city to lose valuable income and teeter near bankruptcy unless vital services are cut. At present, the city has 40 square miles of nearly vacant land, and among the proposed schemes is relocating satellite citizens within a common-use downtown core, a radical means to cut corners and stop servicing outlying areas with a barely surviving tax base. Urban farming would take over the old residential areas \u2013 an extreme shift from Detroit\u2019s long history in manufacturing and distribution, which the head of Local 22 characterizes as an era where \u201cWe built everything. EVERYTHING.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Ewing and Grady present amid a mass of imagery and sounds is the basic story of what happens when complacency supplants innovation, the latter vital to remaining competitive, but unique to Detroit\u2019s history are the race riots which in 1967 had parts of the city burning, and caused the middle class to flee, leaving the city and its tax base fallow. Remnants of its glory days lie in the elegant hotels, ballrooms, concert halls, cinemas, and vast suburban tracts which either stand empty and rot under the elements, or have disintegrated, leaving former residential streets vacant, save for the odd abandoned house, and the rare stubborn inhabitant who refuses to leave his \/ her home.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the strongest visual element is the Michigan Central Station<\/a> \u2013 abandoned since the 1980s and now a giant masonry skeleton, through which light pierces every floor. Towards the doc\u2019s end a local opera singer wanders into the main lobby, and as his magnificent voice rebounds off the decaying infrastructure, the word \u201cVOMIT,\u201d one of several graffiti words spray painted on the walls, takes over our attention.<\/p>\n

There are no solutions within Detropia<\/strong> to the complex problems of urban and industrial decay, but as the owner of a local blues club, The Raven, plainly states, \u201cthis is comin\u2019 to you<\/em>\u201d. No great city deserves such a fate, and amid confounding statistics of flight and bare signs of new jobs \u2013 like GM\u2019s Volt vehicle \u2013 the city continues to survive.<\/p>\n

One caveat: Detropia<\/strong> isn\u2019t a grand showcase of Detroit\u2019s saved and forgotten architectural wonders – they\u2019re one of several story components – so those wanting more detailed cinematographic views of the great public venues will only get a few samples \u2013 Michigan Central Station, an unnamed performance hall, a terrifying structure literally swaying in the evening wind, and what\u2019s likely the once-gorgeous Lee Plaza Hotel<\/a> \u2013 of which the bulk come from local video blogger Crystal Starr<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As a feature-length doc, Detropia<\/strong> starts out very strong and quickly maps out the main issues affecting Detroiters, but the film does lose a bit of momentum towards the end, hovering on interviews that tend to repeat information. (The sole exception is a group of men pulling apart a structure for its steel, as they illustrate the pillaging that occurs when there are no jobs, and one type of self-employment involves the reclamation of metals for scrap sales.) Precise details of the 1967 riots are also given some short shrift, and the riots segment perhaps should\u2019ve appeared earlier in the film, since they\u2019re treated like a lesser cause of the city\u2019s slow decline. A much more thorough chronicle of the city\u2019s race relations can be found in Julian Temple\u2019s provocative BBC doc Requiem for Detroit?<\/a><\/strong> (2010) which also features more footage of the city\u2019s iconic ruins.<\/p>\n

Also available: a podcast interview with cinematographer \/ co-producer Craig Atkinson on his directorial debut,\u00a0Do Not Resist<\/a><\/strong> (2016).<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2012 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— Official Website<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> <\/em>\/\u00a0D<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to: Home \/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews \/ D \u00a0 Film: Very Good\/ DVD Transfer: \u00a0n\/a \/ DVD Extras: n\/a Label: n\/a\u00a0\/ Region: n\/a\u00a0\/\u00a0Released: n\/a Genre: Documentary \/ Detroit \/ Urban Decline Synopsis: Portrait of Detroit’s inhabitants whose lives are still affected by population flight, a decline in jobs, and dwindling tax base for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[1582,1579,1580,1581],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-1so","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5604"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5604"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14765,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5604\/revisions\/14765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}