Detropia (2012)
Average Rating: 7.3/10
Reviews Counted: 38
Fresh: 32 | Rotten: 6
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 7.2/10
Critic Reviews: 19
Fresh: 16 | Rotten: 3
No consensus yet.
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Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 985
My Rating
Movie Info
Detroit's story has encapsulated the iconic narrative of America over the last century the Great Migration of African Americans escaping Jim Crow; the rise of manufacturing and the middle class; the love affair with automobiles; the flowering of the American dream; and now . . . the collapse of the economy and the fading American mythos. With its vivid, painterly palette and haunting score, Detropia sculpts a dreamlike collage of a grand city teetering on the brink of dissolution. These soulful
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All Critics (39) | Top Critics (19) | Fresh (32) | Rotten (6)
A fascinating portrait of a 21st-century post-industrial hellscape.
Top CriticDetropia's filmmakers stay out of the picture, hanging back to allow the viewer to absorb the meaning of Detroit's fate. It is even more complex than we thought.
A startling, haunting documentary about a once-great city, "Detropia" is all but a eulogy for Detroit.
Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, Oscar-nominated for their earlier Jesus Camp, aim a compassionate and artful lens in their new documentary Detropia, finding signs of life in the ruined city.
City services are shutting down, schools are closing, houses are being demo'd by the thousands - like lights being turned out one by one, "Detropia" powerfully captures a city fighting not to go dark.
Artfully - perhaps too artfully - illustrates the transformation of the Motor City from a middle-class utopia to an urban nightmare of blight, crime and fleeing residents.
Detropia is everything you think it's going to be: educational, emotional and highly depressing. Yet, Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing's documentary portrait of Detroit, America's noted city of industry, is not a static picture of decay.
Bleak but aesthetically quenching documentary on how the once great industrial city of Detroit has in modern times become a car wreck.
A hard-hitting yet lyrical documentary about the current economic woes of once prosperous Detroit, an iconic American city.
A sobering, sentimental journey through crumbling Detroit -- but one lacking any real intellectual punch.
The film at its best is a sort of visual essay or tone poem composed of haunting, paradoxically beautiful images of urban ruin that sometimes appears almost post-apocalyptic...
... will do little for Motor City tourism.
Detropia is a tone poem of a decaying city...
Grady and Ewing, employing the observational, often visually poetic style that has become their trademark, capture this city at a crossroads.
'Detropia' is a tone poem, an impressionistic mosaic that gives you a sense of the city and a pandemic of pessimism that challenges those who elect to stay.
The dreamlike visual approach makes for undeniably good cinema but as a meaningful examination of why Detroit unraveled, what it's facing, and where it might go, it's woefully inadequate portraiture.
Audience Reviews for Detropia
Super Reviewer
What of Detroit's future, if it has one? Mayor Bing has a radical proposal to consolidate the still viable neighborhoods to save on services, including mass transportation, which are in danger of being cut even more. While all of that is going on, the documentary follows a vlogger, a bar owner and a union president who do what they can for their city.(The documentary is dedicated to such civic minded individuals.) This also gives the documentary a street level view of events. What's also interesting and possible optimistic about the 2010 census is that it reported a 59% increase in young people moving downtown, some of whom are artists drawn to cheap housing. In conclusion, the documentary sees more hope in the arts than in the white elephant of sports which is pretty much ignored here since they are probably more of interest to surburbanites.
Super Reviewer
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Latest News on Detropia
September 7, 2012:
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Therefore Detroit has proven itself to be more than worthy to be a powerful subject for a documentary. Its struggles beg to be documented and told through the lens of an insightful and thought-provoking filmmaker. That's why "Detropia"'s lack of impact is such a surprise.
Filmed with a feathery touch and told through an arthouse-lens, "Detropia" doesn't cover any new ground. Fans of beautiful cinematography and stylish storytelling will enjoy "Detropia" but if you are looking to learn new things about Detroit or to really feel and understand the true struggles of this once amazing and now dying city, don't bother going to "Detropia".