The City (2023) ‘Chelsea Film Festival’ Movie Review: A Hip-Hop Noir Opera Blends Cultures for a Spectacle that’s Truly Unique

Amit Ulman’s “The City” is entertaining even presented in a vacuum, but it best comes to life with a deeper understanding of its context. After all, it’s difficult to meaningfully categorize, and I say that even realizing that “unclassifiable” can come off as cliché. Still, it’s a film that delights you even as it’s impossible to put your finger on. Once I came to understand that the film is as much a celebration of the Israeli hip-hop scene as it is a throwback noir musical, it started to make a little more sense. “The City” began as a narrative improv bit performed by one of Israel’s most popular rap groups.

Amit Ulman – who brings real strength and self-awareness to the occasionally treacherous trifecta of writer/director/star – worked with collaborators Omer Mor and Omer Havron to develop the music and screenplay for a story featuring Ulman’s original character. The hard-boiled detective, Joe Halfon, is approached one night by femme fatale Sarah Bennett (Moria Akons) to take on the case of her sister’s murder. As Joe pronounces, “Nothing good can come of this!” – and he’s right. He gets caught up in the world of mysterious mob boss Menashe, who orchestrated Sarah’s sister’s murder and is now after Joe as well.

The City (2023) ‘Chelsea Film Festival’ Movie Review — A still from “The City” (2023)

“The City” actually had the benefit of touring for years as a stage musical, in both Hebrew and English versions. It originated – via progressively lengthening hip-hop improv scenes – in 2009. What’s remarkable is that it has translated so well to the screen – or at least, we should remark on how competently it’s been done. Though the fingerprints of Hollywood are all over it, it has less of a midcentury musical feel than a true traditional opera; the action evolves from rap aria to chorus to aria, with only a little spoken dialogue in between.

It’s not often that I get to say this, but one of the strengths of “The City” is how broadly overgeneralized and positively “trope-y” it is. It would be hard to come by a more basic and stereotypical detective noir plot. The characters are unapologetically stock. We even get a tease of the classic “it was all a dream” gambit partway through – thankfully subverted before we’ve finished our groan. However, it’s this overlay of sheer stereotype that serves to let the music shine. In the same way that Puccini is predictable, in the same way, that old librettos offered nothing new, so too does this modern opera captivate us not with story but with sound.

Remembering, now, that this film is literally billed as “an opera,” I’m thinking, “Of course!” And yet, in approaching it as “a film,” we come away a little surprised. The overall effect is of a vehicle for pure escapism in the way that operas used to be, but that some of our modern “escapist” films are not – even Marvel tries to wring us with a little complexity while managing to be completely uninteresting otherwise. “The City” eases us with familiarity at the same time that we are riveted by its rhythm and soundtrack. And there is a lot to say about that.

Wordplay, wordplay, wordplay. Though I can’t say I’ve seen a rap opera before, I would think that this feature would be central and expected. And indeed, the entire film is built around this sense of cleverness and rhyme – even down to the zooms and jump cuts; the camera is in on the joke. The inherent playful nature of the music also lends itself to a kind of comic-book feel.

I have to mention that this film is 100% best appreciated by Hebrew speakers – that much is clear. I felt like I was trying to watch another culture’s iteration of Shakespeare. But another of the most interesting features of the film is that the English subtitles are intentionally rendered – like the best translations are – to produce similar effects in the English language. This is right down to the references, many of which are Israel-specific in Hebrew, but replaced with people and things that more English speakers would recognize.

Just as the film weaves in and out of musical numbers, leading its characters through stylized and brooding settings, it also weaves in and out of narrative and philosophical observation. Though it’s far from an overtly political or socially conscious film, it does seem to set its generic “city” in a context of vaguely relevant corruption. Allusions are made to proliferating conspiracy theories, to shadowy powers operating behind the disasters of our recent past (COVID-19, for example), and to the idea – with the mystery of Menashe’s identity – that no one truly knows what is going on. Whether or not this is true, by the end of the film, we see Joe Halfon as the lone authentic – and therefore an inherently isolated – individual; it’s the cost of being the “detective;” the one who tries to figure things out.

Technically impressive, a joy to absorb and watch, “The City,” when all is said and done, still seems to suffer from a strange categorical homelessness. Thoroughly Israeli, at least from a verbal standpoint, and in featuring the who’s-who of Israeli hip-hop, it’s nevertheless built on the iconography of midcentury Hollywood noir. Considering that contemporary hip-hop originated in the U.S., I suppose this shouldn’t be odd, but hip-hop’s origins are a far cry from “The Maltese Falcon,” which “The City” pays homage to quite starkly at its close. For both Israeli and American audiences, it reaches just beyond their respective reference points, creating a piece of art that seems deeply familiar and yet just a tinge foreign to each. It’s a balancing act that has become deeply consequential, in fact, considering the circumstances we face today – Israeli-American relations are front and center, and I expect they will be, for some time.