None of the stories directly intersect -- it would be clumsy to create connections between such disparate locations and people. Given the variance in tone, were it not for the use of the cabs as the settings in all of the various cities, the viewer might be left scratching his or her head to make a connection between all five locations.
Yet all of the tales are about communication and miscommunication [MAIN THEME]. The very nature of a taxi ride requires two disparate strangers to be thrown together who might not otherwise connect under normal circumstances because of their classes, races, social roles, and personalities. The nature of a taxi ride transcends class barriers and worldviews. For example, the young Los Angeles taxi driver cannot understand the appeal of films, while the casting director lives, breathes, and sleeps film. The New Yorker is incapable of believing that anyone can know his beloved city as well as himself. The seeing taxi driver learns from the blind woman; the priest cannot escape...
In Helsinki, the driver and the passengers seem to compete for who has the worst luck and most depressing fate. The characters all exchange war stories and perspectives in the hermetically sealed environment of the cab: unlike many other situations in life, there is no way out.
The truth is forced out of both drivers and passengers by the situation, not because all of the characters are particularly honest. The situation creates the rapport between the characters, rather than relies upon a chosen connection. Through the medium of the taxi, Night on Earth shows how every human being has something that links him or her to someone else -- whether it is striving, arrogance, despair, sexuality. The enclosure of the cab forces the riders to see themselves mirrored in the faces of others who they might not even deign to speak with under ordinary circumstances.
Work Cited
Night on Earth. Directed by Jim Jarmusch. 1991.
