TIFF 2020 — City Hall. The American political system is…
By: Ryan Vienneau
Tags: Boston, Politics, United States Politics, Documentary, Film

The American political system is crumbling. Trump and the Republican Party have destroyed many policies and social safety nets meant to help the most at-risk portion of the population, while parroting far-right and fascist talking points to a voting base looking for someone to blame their problems on. On the other side of the aisle, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party have done next to nothing to stop their opponents, more often than not simply compromising in order to please their wealthy donors. The Democratic establishment will pay lip-service to leftist ideas (Black Lives Matter, affordable housing, education reform), but will never do any of the work to actually accomplish the goals that they talk about. This brings incredible amounts of suffering to those in the lower classes of the American population, who also tend to disproportionately be BIPOC, who just want their voices to be heard. It is here where we find Frederick Wiseman’s new film, City Hall.

Filmed from the fall of 2018 to the winter of 2019, Wiseman’s new film uses its incredible 272 minute runtime to examine in detail the many aspects of what the municipal government of the city of Boston does for its constituents. This includes both meetings within the titular City Hall, but also public works projects such as garbage collection, Veterans Association meetings, pest control, and diversity think tanks.

The first half of the film focuses itself mostly on mayor Marty Walsh, a Democrat and former union leader with the distinctive Boston accent. Throughout his segments we see him speaking with department heads and other employees of the city hall, with much of his messaging focusing on outreach. Marty Walsh wants his constituents to know that he speaks for them, and can represent them to the wider world. These scenes are accompanied by gorgeous shots of downtown Boston, towering skyscrapers, beautiful monuments, and bustling economic sectors. The audience gets the sense that this is a well oiled bureaucratic machine, ready to take on all the tasks associated with helping those less fortunate, even though there are very few tangible solutions offered for these problems.

The second half of the film takes these politicians to task on how little they are actually doing for the community. Wiseman begins to focus his attention on the poorer areas of Boston outside of the downtown core. He starts to include shots of buildings in disrepair, low income housing, and an incredibly evocative shot of a woman collecting cans on the side of the road beside a sign that simply says “VOTE”. Outside of those shots he has long scenes of the citizens of Boston expressing their frustrations with the way decisions are being made in the municipal government. This includes an incredible scene at a town hall focused on the opening of a medicinal cannabis dispensary in the area of Dorchester (coincidentally the same part of Boston that Mayor Walsh is from). This is a longer scene, showing all the ways the government has failed the community in this decision. They are not being informed about how the dispensary license system worked, the companies being given these licenses are not properly vetted on whether or not they will give back to the communities they inhabit, and the people of these communities are not being consulted as to whether or not they want something like this in the first place.

This film really comes alive when the people of Boston are speaking their mind about the way the government is run. An earlier scene involves a meeting discussing what a plot of land should be used for. The meeting’s leader discusses using the land for an NAACP building before being rebuffed by another member of the meeting. She states that the NAACP doesn’t need as much space as is being offered, and says that most of these land developers would rather work with organizations they already have connections with than establishing new connections with organizations that may do better work more specific to the community. She also expresses that it seems like the community around the land was not consulted in these higher level decisions. This shows the municipality is only interested in appearing to do work to help marginalized communities, rather than doing the actual on the ground community focused work.

It’s very easy to read this movie as a simple anti-Trump film, Marty Walsh acting as a crusader against the Republican leader. He even states so much as well, when he describes a photo-op of him standing with all of the immigrant workers in City Hall. But the film is much more nuanced than that, it can show the things that Mayor Walsh has done correctly, but never lionizes him. The film actively shows his failings and flaws in regards to helping his constituents, as evidenced by the anger and frustration his constituents show to his lackluster policies. He may be able to speak on these issues and appear at photo ops, but he is never able to go beyond that. The film is more interested in showing the people of Boston, how they try to work within a system designed to exploit them. It is about the people of an American city, and how the government can help them short term, but will never be able to provide the meaningful change citizens need.