Review: In 'City Hall,' Frederick Wiseman digs into the mechanisms that make Boston tick

At 90 years old, and with a half-century of methodically fascinating documentaries under his belt, Frederick Wiseman doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone. He can knock out a thought-provoking, richly detailed portrait of municipal government like “City Hall,” and all we have to do is appreciate it.

The city here is Boston, and Wiseman uses his access to show multiple faces of Boston’s government at every level. He takes inside the start-of-shift briefing at a Boston Police precinct, rides along on a garbage truck, and even attends a civil wedding performed by a city clerk. (Congratulations, Becca and Molly!)

Wiseman=s cameras also sit in on a lot of meetings. There’s a lunch meeting for immigrant business owners, with a Chinese noodle cooking demonstration. There are long discussions about caring for Boston’s homeless population. There is a town hall about whether the working-class neighbors of Dorchester want a cannabis dispensary in their part of town. There are earnest city officials discussing how to create an art-friendly space, or helping minority-owned businesses take full advantage of city programs.

And everywhere, it seems, is Marty Walsh, the mayor of Boston. Wiseman finds Walsh congratulating the Red Sox for winning the World Series (this was filmed in 2018), or opening a food bank, or speaking to a Veteran’s Day remembrance, or chatting with the head of the local NAACP chapter about bringing the civil-rights group’s annual convention to Boston. My favorite moment may be when Walsh is serving gravy to homeless Bostonians at a Goodwill Industries Thanksgiving dinner. (Walsh got a gravy boat; Sen. Ed Markey got to serve the mashed potatoes.)

As with all of Wiseman’s films — whether he’s chronicling life in a boxing gym, a Parisian strip joint, or the Jackson Heights neighborhood in Brooklyn — the moments form a mosaic of an organization at work. Here, over four-and-a-half hours, Wiseman shows us not only see how much Boston’s government is overseeing, but we’re seeing how many dedicated people are doing that work. They are the heart and soul of “City Hall,” the faces of a no-longer-faceless bureaucracy.

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‘City Hall’

★★★1/2

Available for streaming starting Friday, November 20, on the SLFS@Home virtual cinema. Not rated, but probably PG-13 for language. 275 minutes.