94 minute running time … strange movie, depressing … about a 13-year-old autistic boy who doesn’t go home after school (in Rockaway Beach, Queens) and instead rides the New York City subways continuously for several days in a row, experiencing all the insanity and weirdness and violence and conflict and rare kindness that surrounds him (including a great break-dancing routine by a trio of kids — the highlightof the movie for me) … his Spanish-speaking mother (an illegal Mexican) is worried sick and is desperate and sort of stuck with no money or contacts or friends, her husband is working upstate (possibly milking cows) … the whole thing is kind of hard to sit through and believe me I fast forwarded through a hell of a lot of it … but I could sort of understand what the filmmaker was getting at (about alienation and loneliness and confusion and terror and the horrors and wonders of life in the Big CIty, etc.). It wasn’t terrible, just a major downer.
From Stephen Holden: “Throughout the movie, you are forcefully reminded that time spent on the subway may be the ultimate New York grounding experience. You feel the city’s collective pulse as the entire spectrum of humanity pours around you … It stays with its characters to a wonderfully witty and understated ending.“ I didn’t find anything witty about the ending and have no idea what Holden is talking about … but it’s a capital A.R.T. art movie for sure.
