SOMEWHERE, EVERYWHERE, NOWHERE

Her (2013) Warner Bros. Pictures

The atmosphere created by the scenario on a movie is often used as a way to strengthen its plot. By selecting particular cities and particular sides of a city, filmmakers are able to enhance the representation of the characters' moods and conflicts. In science fiction and fantasy movies like V for Vendetta, Blade Runner and 1984, for example, cities are many times portrayed as dirty and oppressive dystopian scenarios, where people must fight to survive. What better way to portray hope, for instance, than with such a contrasting setting? On the other hand, many filmmakers, like the American writer and director Woody Allen, use a specific existing location, as a mean to depict the lifestyle of a particular time and place. However, in a few recent mainstream productions, I have observed an interesting tendency of filming a movie over multiple cities, as if they were all the same city. 

Films like Blindness (2008) or Her (2013), are good examples of movies that take advantage of this resource. By doing so, the scenario in which the movie is set gives space to the characters and the story to develop without being site-specific. Fernando Meirelles' Blindness, for example, was filmed in the cities of São Paulo, Toronto and Montevideo. The option of not showing one particular city shows that for this movie, the city is not a protagonist. It is merely an ethereal backdrop for the action to develop. As if, since nearly everyone in the film has become blind, without the visual aspect, to all other senses, every city is the same as all other cities. This very same resource is used in Her. While in this movie, the city is referred to as Los Angeles, one can not actually recognize the city in every scene. That is because scenes are overlaid with footage of Shanghai. By doing so, the image of an ideal city is created. In Her, the future city of Los Angeles is a globalized utopian metropolis. It is a calm, convenient and comfortable city. The raised walkways, clean skyscrapers and little traffic create the image of a sterile future. Fitting perfectly to the theme of lacking interpersonal communication explored in the plot.

In both films, by showing a collage of cities that are close to our reality, yet unrecognizable as a whole, the filmmakers end up creating an interesting perspective of the times we are living in: when everywhere can be reached at all time, even the most particular places can become somewhere and nowhere at the same time.