In Jack­son Heights – first look review

Can cap­i­tal­ism and cul­tur­al diver­si­ty share peace­able co-exis­tence in the urban cen­tres of the west­ern world? Fred­er­ick Wise­man hauls his cam­era and boom mic into the bustling New York neigh­bour­hood of Jack­son Heights in the bor­ough of Queens to see what’s going on up there.

He uses still shots of street life as the visu­al con­nec­tive tis­sue between cap­tur­ing meet­ings held by var­i­ous minor­i­ty groups: Columbians cel­e­brat­ing a World Cup vic­to­ry and then tak­ing their par­ty to the pave­ment; a mature LGBT com­mu­ni­ty cir­cle dis­cussing the venue for future meet­ings; a Halal butch­er bless­ing chick­ens pri­or to slic­ing their throats and hav­ing their still-twich­ing bod­ies dragged through var­i­ous grub­by pro­cess­ing machines; a group of His­pan­ic activists gath­er­ing sto­ries of small busi­ness being forced out of their premis­es due to unfair rent hikes; and even a group of Chris­t­ian urban beau­ti­fiers who are seen descend­ing into intense prayer when one of their num­ber explains that her father is dying.

As with recent films such as At Berke­ley and Nation­al Gallery, there’s the sense with In Jack­son Heights that Wise­man is cap­tur­ing a place at a very spe­cif­ic moment in time, right at the precipice of irrev­o­ca­ble change. Whether this change will be pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive is for the view­er to pon­der. This process of trib­al adap­ta­tion is one that is usu­al­ly linked to depress­ing ques­tions of com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion and how pri­vate and state fund­ing come with a very dif­fer­ent set of cul­tur­al pro­vi­sos. This film presents a pop­u­lous who are acute­ly aware that they’re going to have to fight every day and night to pre­serve the sin­gu­lar allure of their locale.

Wise­man avoids reel­ing off a direct his­to­ry of the area, instead fram­ing it as a sanc­tu­ary. At a com­mu­ni­ty action group com­prised of Mex­i­can immi­grants, one woman explains of the ter­ri­ble ordeal she and her daugh­ters went through to get across the bor­der, and her utter deter­mi­na­tion to make this new life for her­self and her fam­i­ly speaks vol­umes about the sig­nif­i­cance of mul­ti-cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties and build­ing homes away from home.

And yet, the film doesn’t just make a robust case for diver­si­ty and the ongo­ing preser­va­tion of the urban land­scape. While busi­ness­es are forced to close, Wise­man plays devil’s advo­cate by pon­der­ing whether some of the shops and ser­vices in the area – many sell­ing mis­cel­la­neous colour­ful tat – could do with updat­ing their pro­files to actu­al­ly fit in with the com­mer­cial needs of age. At the same time, the film cel­e­brates the ram­shackle brand­ing, hand-drawn shop signs and the sheer array of very spe­cif­ic out­lets the area has to offer: dur­ing our jour­ney, we are allowed a peek into a shop in which peo­ple pay to have their eye­brows mas­saged with lengths of yarn, and also a His­pan­ic gay disco.

As usu­al with Wise­man, the extend­ed run­time doesn’t mean that the film is hulk­ing invest­ment of time and ener­gy – on the con­trary as the film flies by. Yet on this occa­sion, you do get the sense that there’s maybe a slight short­age of mate­r­i­al, as the direc­tor does keep return­ing over and over to the same venues, and his expo­si­tion shots of the raised sub­way line which fall between scenes all start to feel very famil­iar. It’s iron­ic that this film about diver­si­ty occa­sion­al lacks diversity.