The Cruise

A Documentary Film that Tours the Paradise/Inferno: NYC

Sunday, March 13 at 5pm

Kicking off our new partnership, Proteus Gowanus and The New Inquiry present a screening of the documentary film, The Cruise, by Bennett Miller. The film follows Timothy “Speed” Levitch on his unorthodox Gray Line double-decker bus tours, designed not just to inform but to transform as he takes passengers into the shifting heart of our city, one moment a paradise, the next an inferno.

Made in 1998, the film still resonates with the awe that New York inspires as Levitch narrates both the common history as well as his own idiosyncratic relationship with Manhattan; his relationship is an on-and-off romance, abusive, cathartic and ultimately a solitary voyage.

Part of the dark side of Levitch’s obsession is his prescient sense that “this cannot last”, expressed through his own manic trajectory as much as by the city itself. On a visit to the Twin Towers, he observes that if you spin around enough and then look up, they appear to be falling—and the viewer feels the disquiet at the heart of the film, a sensation starkly highlighted for the post-9/11 viewer.

View the trailer here.

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