Critic Reviews

What Wiseman’s film boils down to, in many ways, is a much-needed dose of competency porn – a snapshot of government officials trying their very best to do better, and to be better. And that might be the story he’s really telling: a reminder that government, for all of its speed bumps and snags, can work. It can help. The people running it just have to want it to.

It’s a civics lesson that’s subtly delivered within some thoroughly exciting documentary filmmaking.

Even in a filmography with more than its fair share of impressive achievements, it deserves consideration as one of Wiseman’s greatest.

At a time when America looks like it's tearing apart at the seams, there’s something altogether reassuring — even downright inspiring — about Frederick Wiseman’s new documentary.

Wiseman’s true subject here is arguably off-screen, shamed by example, guilty in absentia: the erosion of democratic values and civil, civic debate in an increasingly divided country.

With City Hall, his 45th feature, he [Wiseman] has composed another epic from a series of intricate, carefully arranged miniatures, a four-and-a-half-hour sprawl of a movie that will leave you admiring its agility and concision.

City Hall runs four and a half mostly engrossing hours, making it one of Wiseman’s longest. That sounds daunting, but I could have watched hours more of people simply talking to one another in auditoriums and across conference-room tables.

I cannot think of another film that plainly and comprehensively lays bare the both the complex apparatus at work, and the people dedicated to serving its populace.

Its provocations can seem savage at a glance, but they emerge from an observational tranquility that is uniquely Frederick Wiseman’s own.

With City Hall, Wiseman brings his quiet observational skills to the day-to-day operations of local government, which is why the film is so well-timed for this particular moment.