City So Real

While the scope of “City So Real” is impressively wide, it’s the small moments like Sáles-Griffin doing his best to vote that make it truly special.

An essential five-part documentary from the great nonfiction filmmaker Steve James.

“City So Real” carries its weight effortlessly. Responsible to the historic moment yet enthralling in a minute-by-minute capacity few unscripted or scripted TV series can earn, Steve James’ latest is a flat-out must-see.

The weight of so many of the country’s problems, all wrapped up in a single city, is palpable, but the filmmakers also leave space for lightness. ... James doesn’t offer solutions to the problems presented—how could he?—but lets the dark and the light exist alongside one another.

There are corners of this series in which the filmmaker's sweeping ambition to encapsulate as much of Chicago in all its beauty and blight gets the better of him. On the other hand, by apportioning as much grandeur and artistry to the green weeds in blank lots in poorer neighborhoods as he does to the grand architecture of Gold Coast area buildings, James creates in this series the feel of an honest romantic letter to a difficult mate.

It’s an impressionistic, peripatetic tour of Chicago in the very present tense that moves fluidly among the clashing, contradictory hierarchies, neighborhoods and institutions that don’t just struggle, but seem to be in a constant state of competition. ... Mr. James has the wisdom to follow his instinct for where a story, or even a scene, is going to go.

"City So Real" seeks to present "the soul of a quintessentially American city," getting beyond the gun-violence headlines and political caricaturing of the town to celebrate its people and personality. Yet while it's easy to admire that ambition, that goal would have arguably been better served by a more concise presentation and tighter lens on the mayoral contest and protests.