AllMovie

In 1977 concerned filmmaker James Benning set out to document what he saw as the urban decay that was sweeping through Milwaukee. The film, which offered sixty, static, one-minute shots of an industrialized metropolitan landscape offered a carefully crafted meditation on the sidewalks, smokestacks, vehicles, and people of the once thriving Wisconsin city. Twenty-seven years later, Benning would return to Milwaukee to explore just how much had changed over the years by essentially shooting the "same" film once again. In capturing the exact same shots the second time around, Benning uses Milwaukee as a microcosm to explore how much the entire country has been affected by nearly three decades of progress and decay.