For lovers of urban things, cinema is a goldmine. And the opening of Philadelphia, with Bruce Springsteen singing Or will we leave each other alone like this on the streets of Philadelphia?, is epic. The viewer follows a camera flying over the city, crossing the bridge, skirting the skyscrapers, and showing an American City Hall, neither dreamlike nor historical nor modern. Then it descends to ground level: creatures in the park and at school, residents in an affluent neighborhood sweeping leaves, the fire station, canoes on the river, barges at the port, and the hospital. The camera enters a shop, the kitchen of a restaurant, cyclists in the park and people playing volleyball. A party wall painted with historical drawings recreating scenes between Indians and settlers. Abandoned houses, a long queue to access some public service, a homeless person feeding pigeons, and people waving from the sidewalks; a street cart, a fruit stand and some old people happy to see cameras. It doesn't seem too prepared, it could be any day in the nineties on the East Coast of the United States.
Cities have a soul, and there are filmmakers who know how to portray it faithfully. The story written by Ron Nyswaner visits different places in one of the most progressive cities, with all the burden of prejudices and fears of a society that preached one thing while doing another. I was thinking about these things when, suddenly, at minute 1:19 of the movie, I realize that in Tom Hanks' apartment (a beautiful loft with green walls), a poster of Barcelona's main festival, the year of the Olympics, is hanging: Mercè 92. Seen in perspective, I think it cannot be a coincidence. Someone hung that poster behind Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington on purpose. They could have hung a photograph of the Eiffel Tower or London's Big Ben, but they put up a poster of La Mercè.
Saving the distances, the East Coast of the United States, from Boston to Washington, is as long as Catalonia from Cadaqués to Alcanar. Philly has approximately 1.5 million inhabitants, almost like Barcelona's 1.6 million. Two cities with an important port, which suffered the oil crisis, and which, without large extensions of monarchical properties or grand palaces or gardens, have made themselves thanks to a solid industrial base. Cities that always vote to the left of their hinterlands and that have distinguished themselves by educational excellence in political and urban matters.
There is no method to make a city better, no regulated studies, no magic formulas. There is no career that qualifies you with a degree to serve as mayor, and one learns basically by contrast, by questioning and sharing difficulties and risks with other cities. This was the purpose of Aula Barcelona created by Pasqual Maragall at Cidob, where he fostered meetings with other mayors who had been implementing the use of bicycles for years or promoting heating and cooling networks to save energy. I like to think that, despite being very catastrophic, Catalans have also known how to export good urban ideas and a spirit, that of the La Mercè festivities, which was immortalized in a film as important and sensitive as Philadelphia.