The Hill (2013) User Reviews

Should Be Taught In Any Urban Studies Class

[aaron-goode · 10/10 · 2 July 2014]

Documentarian Molomot vividly shows how race, class, money, and power operate in pernicious ways in urban America through the case study of a single mid-sized American city. In the 1950s New Haven, Connecticut embarked on the nation's most intensive program of "urban renewal" -- funded by more federal grants per capita than any other "Model City" in the country, New Haven displaced tens of thousands of low-income people with highway construction and other tragically misguided schemes of well-meaning but shortsighted politicians. By the 2000s, urban renewal was largely deemed a failure, but New Haven found itself repeating many of the same mistakes when it decided to raze three blocks of low-income housing in The Hill neighborhood to build a new magnet school -- which the neighborhood didn't really need, but which proved irresistible because (as in the 1950s) someone else was footing in the bill. The film's artfully constructed narrative, following the displaced families through the drama of a federal civil rights lawsuit they filed against City Hall, packs an emotional wallop. Larger themes of class bias and structural political myopia are unmistakable but never overwhelm the deep humanity of the story and the poignancy of the lives damaged and destroyed. Overall a brilliant film that could gainfully be taught in any urban studies class.