Imagine if Frederick Wiseman and David Lynch had a bastard child, and you’ll get a sense of the movie’s off-kilter aesthetic, a potent and pointed mix of firsthand observation and surreal flights of fancy.
This haunting piece of documentary cinema tells the story of one city in economic decay; but really, as the real people in the film repeatedly state, this isn’t just a Detroit problem; it’s an American problem.
DETROPIA successfully symbolizes Detroit and nation’s anguish.
Of all the Sundance films tackling the gap between the richest 1% and the rest of the nation, the documentary ‘Detropia’ stands out for how it encapsulates the causes and potential solutions.
The most moving documentary I have seen in years. Both an ardent love letter to past vitality and a grateful salute to those who remain in place – the survivors, utterly without illusion, who refuse to leave. The filmmakers are so attuned to color and to shade that I was amazed by the handsomeness of what I was seeing. I’m not being perverse, this is a beautiful film.
Beautiful and quietly devastating.
With evocative music and hauntingly lovely cinematography, “Detropia” conveys some of the emptiness and beauty of the city while delving deeply into the economic battering it has taken.
The defeat of the middle class that has comprised the last decade of Detroit’s history. That painful story and its meaning for the rest of America is the subject of Detropia, an important, heartbreaking, and yet still occasionally hilarious documentary.