Boasting citizens from dozens of different countries, with over 140 languages spoken within its borders, Queens is often touted as the most diverse place on earth. Much of this diversity stems off the straight-arrow course of the elevated 7 line, which spans a series of immigrant enclaves from Elmhurst to Corona and Flushing, the Chinese population of the latter far outpacing that of Manhattan’s much smaller Chinatown. Nestled amid these is Jackson Heights, a one-time Irish stronghold since occupied by successive waves of Hispanic, Indian and Southeast Asian immigrants, dozens of old and new-world cultures coexisting in close proximity. The perfect place then, for Frederick Wiseman, the tireless cataloger of America’s micro and macro communities and institutions, whose primary concern remains the experimental and tempestuous nature of these ever-changing social constructs.
In Jackson Heights feels like the prototypical Wiseman film, so much so that it’s surprising it took him this long to tackle this topic. He’s skirted it in the past, covering ordinary places made extraordinary by the level of diversity on display, from 1970’s harrowing Hospital to 1977’s Canal Zone and the recent At Berkeley. Each of these involved a tug-of-war competition over the place’s essential character, carried out by a litany of different, often competing, interests. Never though, has he directly examined the way a tidal flow of new residents shapes and changes the environs they occupy. Shot in the summer of 2014, at a point where Jackson Heights was likely more diverse than ever before, it captures a pleasant idyll that’s also marked by internal divisions and external threats.
New York’s upward spiral of hyper-gentrification, by which one neighborhood after another has been occupied and developed by outside interests, the profits sucked off into the stratospheric realm of the super-wealthy, imperils the very humble livability that makes this setting such a prime destination for upwardly mobile migrants. That process is exemplified here by the establishment of a Business Improvement District, an ostensibly positive tool which nonetheless threatens the take the power out of the hands of local shop-owners, placing the greatest negotiating strength in the collective interest of corporations and other powerful entities. The long-term profiteering goals pursued by such interests, which include raising taxes and property rates, seem to promise a serious reckoning for an area that, once considered out of the way, has been drawn ever-closer to the center of an expanding metropolis.
In this sense, the community’s condition seems representative of that of the entire modern world, the spaces between people and the companies pursuing their income growing ever smaller. The conflict here is itself demonstrative of the sort of complex push and pull that Wiseman’s cinematic analyses thrive upon, with one side’s concept of community improvement potentially making that community uninhabitable for another. Unlike At Berkeley, in which the director’s sympathies seemed to lie with the institutional heft of the school’s academic authorities, here he solely gives us the underdog perspective, a fair choice considering their adversaries don’t actually occupy the neighborhood which functions as the film’s subject. The BID, with its aim of attracting high-end businesses, removing street vendors to beautify and sanitize public spaces, seems contrary to the movie’s concept of a city, any attempt to pave over the lively dynamism of this place inevitably marked by hubris. For Wiseman, lively does not necessarily equal wild, however, and his serene camera gradually delves into the fabric of all the film’s conflicts and conversations, teasing out a wide variety of emotions and motivations.
Much of the running time is spent in meetings, Wiseman’s favorite method of dialogue, settling in for patiently-held master shots interspersed with quick close-ups of the principal speakers. The steady flow of these meetings, which concern the structuring and behavior of various sub-societies existing within the framework of a larger one, establish In Jackson Heights as a film focused on how the interaction between disparate groups shapes the larger structure of community, capturing the interplay between personal and factional interactions on a continuum that points toward the construction of society as a whole. Aside from these meetings, the most important moments are seemingly unimportant ones, the slice-of-life smatterings which establish the rhythm of the place. At a taxi school, a loquacious instructor provides a room full of middle-aged men with priceless mnemonic devices for memorizing the cardinal points. A party for an elderly local “mayor” is disrupted by the arrival of a singing telegram, which threatens to turn into a geriatric striptease. Scenes at bars, both straight and gay, portray an even more frenzied accumulation of different types congregating in one crowded place.
Beyond functioning as more thematic shading, the gay bar scenes show a side of this area not usually glimpsed by outside observers. They’re also further accompanied by in-depth conversations with the town’s LGBT contingent, namely a transgender advocacy group, which struggles to gain ground against an ingrained culture of conservative machismo. It’s a reminder that bias and intolerance remain even in an atmosphere of startling diversity, and that even among outwardly monolithic immigrant groups exist a startling profusion of differing interests. The fiery efforts of young activists, who march the streets and fight back against discriminatory businesses, are contrasted with the placid tempo of a support group for older homosexuals, and then further by scenes of an elderly woman, 98 and still fiercely aggressive, who bemoans the hollow loneliness of a world where all your friends and family have died. That these three different events all take place in the same setting, a synagogue no less, says a lot about the view of community presented in In Jackson Heights, it’s broad inclusivity and observant eye for the innate specifics of progress.