In praise of two hats in Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth

My Dad always wore the same thing to pick me up on a Sat­ur­day. A wide black leather jack­et, but­toned past his chin, wire-framed rec­tan­gu­lar glass­es, a scarf tied around the low­er half of his face, and a wool­ly hat around the top. He had a seri­ous face, a heavy Ger­man accent, and when we went to McDonald’s he would point at the meal he want­ed rather than order­ing it. For New­port, South Wales, in the mid-2000s, every­thing he did felt out of place.

When I first saw Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth, my Dad could have been on the screen. The 1991 anthol­o­gy film fol­lows a series of lon­ers on noc­tur­nal taxi rides. In New York, we meet YoYo (Gian­car­lo Espos­i­to), a Brook­lyn native who after try­ing unsuc­cess­ful­ly to hail a cab – dozens of vacant taxis dri­ve past him; a Black man – final­ly gets picked up by Hel­mut (Armin Mueller-Stahl), an East Ger­man immi­grant who can’t dri­ve. Hel­mut says he will take him to ​“Brook­land”, although ​“bet­ter [YoYo] show [him] the way.”

They get off to a stalled start in every sense – YoYo has to take the wheel to get them more than a few meters down the road. In the taxi’s inte­ri­or, I instant­ly recog­nised their stilt­ed con­ver­sa­tion. Just like my Dad’s exchanges with so many McDonald’s staff, Hel­mut, an ex-cir­cus clown from Dres­den, grap­ples with phras­es like ​“cool” and ​“good to go”. YoYo, who knows the rules, geog­ra­phy and lan­guage of New York inside out, looks on with dis­be­lief, him­self mis­tak­ing Helmut’s stern mut­ter­ings for irritation.

But then Hel­mut points at YoYo’s head and says, ​“We have the same hat,” and they do. They are wear­ing near­ly the same ushanka hat with ear flaps. Helmut’s is beige suede with worn, white wool around the fore­head; YoYo’s is grey, lined with soft fur and clear­ly more expen­sive. ​“No, mine’s dif­fer­ent,” YoYo protests, ​“Mine’s the newest-lat­est, mine’s fresh.” But it’s too late; the pair are matching.

Through this serendip­i­tous, sur­face sim­i­lar­i­ty, Jar­musch reveals stronger cul­tur­al con­nec­tions between the two. Dressed in match­ing head­gear, they mir­ror each oth­er more than clash as they launch into a dou­ble act in the front seats. They share a strange sense of humour – both think each other’s name is ridicu­lous, Hel­mut because a yoyo is a ​“toy for kids”, YoYo because he says the name ​“Hel­met” is like ​“call­ing your kid Lampshade”.

Hel­mut mim­ics YoYo by hold­ing on to an imag­i­nary wheel, admir­ing his com­mand over the road. Both char­ac­ters are oper­at­ing the taxi, and also not. Nei­ther can take the driver’s seat in this city – Hel­mut because he is an immi­grant who doesn’t know how, YoYo because he is treat­ed as ​“invis­i­ble” in Manhattan.

As in so many of his films, Jar­musch sees lan­guage bar­ri­ers and cul­tur­al dis­so­nance as fer­tile cin­e­mat­ic ground. Night on Earth rev­els in the social mis­fires I dread­ed as a child. It also showed me their val­ue. By the end of the cab ride, we see both char­ac­ters truth­ful­ly for how they behave in tan­dem. We under­stand Hel­mut and his naivety, mak­ing his lone onward jour­ney into an unfa­mil­iar New York ever more poignant.

When I was a kid, my Dad was pass­ing acquain­tances with one of the servers at McDonald’s. They spoke briefly every time we walked in; both thought the oth­er was bizarre, but I remem­ber them often laugh­ing. Unlike Hel­mut and YoYo’s rap­port, I didn’t find their con­ver­sa­tions a joy to watch. But the truth Jar­musch unearths in Night on Earth was still there. Their inter­ac­tions allowed me to see my Dad clear­ly – his rare humour, and his iso­la­tion liv­ing in a city of unknown rules.