‘City Hall’ Review: Frederick Wiseman’s Mammoth Boston Doc Shows Anti-Trump Politics in Practice

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It’s been seven years since the Boston Marathon bombing put the Massachusetts capital in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, and beyond the odd bright flash of #BostonStrong graffiti on …

’s typically sprawling, inquisitive and inclusive anatomy of the city’s inner workings. Putting his hometown under the lens for the first time in his vast career, the 90-year-old documentarian — now resident in Paris — finds it in imperfect but hopeful flux, taking stock of its social diversity, inequalities and future priorities under the conscientious leadership of Democratic mayor Marty Walsh.

Yet in certain key senses, the film is an unusual Wiseman work, not complacent in its gaze or approach. More insistently political than most of his films, albeit through observational emphasis rather than direct editorialization, it’s also rare in its character-driven nature, allowing a clear protagonist — a hero, even — to emerge from its many diffuse scenes of everyday life across a broad social and professional spectrum.

In the interim, then, Walsh and his administration have resolved to make Boston an example of a forward-looking democratic city, weathering the surrounding chaos of the country. “We can’t solve the problems of the United States of America in here,” he says, before more optimistically venturing that “all it takes is one city” to begin wider change.

Not everything goes well, even with the best intentions of Walsh’s team, as residents bristle over a deep-seated sense of disenfranchisement, their trust not yet won. At one public meeting over the imminent opening of a cannabis store in the run-down Dorchester area, a Black woman fears the government is only paying mandated lip service to their concerns. “After we talk, we vent, we cry, we laugh — what happens then?” she asks.

 

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