Life In A Day.
It's going to stretch me as a writer as well, as it's going to be really difficult to describe this film:
There's no allegory or representative theme to pick apart. No main character with whom you have the entire hour and a half to bond with, relate to, or connect personally. There's just one song that plays throughout, (albeit in various forms). There's no narrative to guide or encourage the viewer, nor is there actually a set plot.
See what i mean about it being difficult to explain exactly what this is film is about, let alone write a criticism of it?! I suppose i can't even say it's a spoiler, as there's not even any cliffhangers or links... Argh!
Okay, I'll take a deep breath and have a go.
Luckily it does have some kind of structure; it's at least chronological. It's a lovely concept; a film consisting of thousands of small home-made videos culminating to make a feature-length movie about one day; 24th June 2010. Countless people from the far reaches of the globe share a ten-second glimpse into their lives.
It's full of contrast, from sobering humility, humbling poverty, to dizzying success stories. Yet it took me on a 90 minute journey to figure out what exactly i was analysing...
I say there's no theme, but there are lots of little morals that are unearthed when you realise the methodical order in which the tapes have been placed...
The film begins at 6am. In China a small boy is lighting incense to remember his dead mother. In the next second, a woman is having a talk with her son about the possibility of her dying from Cancer. Then it flicks to a teenage boy who moodily shuns his mother's cheerful joking. What do we learn? Don't take your mother for granted? Just as i think I'm starting to get the film "Oh it's a series of life lessons" - it confuses me again.
Far away from civilisation, there's a squalid village, and with sun-seared skin and frow-burrowed faced men are herding cows. "If there's one thing in life i have learned" grumbles the tired elderly figure "It's that all women are trouble"
Ha! It seems some things are universal. This injection of humour took me by surprise, and it made it all the funnier to imagine words come from such a man.
Babies took their first breath and fluttered open their translucently-thin blueish pink eyelids for the very first time.
Okay, so perhaps it's a buoyant and jolly reminder that we're all the same humans inside.
Yet again, i was proven wrong. We are none of us the same.
A cardboard sign flashes on the screen "What is in your pocket?" ...
"The keys to my car"
"I have twenty dollars"
"I have my phone"
Mainly run of the mill, light hearted answers, perhaps things which you yourself have right at this second.
"I have a gun"
"I have a syringe"
Wait a second...
"I have nothing."
"Nothing"
"Nothing. But i am happy"
The face who uttered this last phrase smiles out from the screen. It is a black face, a beautiful woman holding her child. What a world away from the first answer. The word 'Awe-inspiring' comes to mind. As if to emphasise this juxtaposition, the screen flicks from a conveyor belt of miscellaneous food products, to three malnourished women, naked and farming grain. It was a sobering sight, it upset me. I felt as though i was ungrateful and unworthy to be full and content and lying in bed watching a film whilst there are people out there in this situation.
I'm naturally quite a jumpy person, not exactly nervous, but easily frightened. This was the point at which the film took advantage of people like me, as it really started to deepen the claws it already had puncturing my conscience.
"What do you fear?"
The clips got shorter and flashier, whizzing from helpless blindfolded men getting punched in the spine to monkeys in masks who, upon first glance, seem like strange phantasmal children in doll dresses. There were scenes from "Love parade" in which- ironically- people died from being trampled, referring again back to the contrast that plagues the film. I was on edge for the best part of twenty minutes, not wanting to watch, nor having the will to look away. Cows had their throats cut, towns were exploded. All of the uplifting joy of children's smiles of yore were forgotten, it was almost as though the film was replicating the dizzying and disorienting sensation of being drunk or high. My head was literally spinning and i was reluctant to move my arm from it's position above my head, despite the pins and needles i got from blood restriction; no explanation why, i was just frightened to move.
I mentioned the soundtrack, i think it's important to include this -not just because this is normally a music blog- but because it so exquisitley exemplifies the contrast that i was talking about. The same song is sang at intervals during the movie. At the start of the film, the song is sung by Ellie Goulding. It's like they type-casted the singer; she's cute bubbly and pretty, as is the song. But it's the song's dark twin that I'm interested in... Despite it's identical lyrics, the music has a haunting and almost unbearable climax.
This is the soundtrack to the apocalypse;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGBLq0Boe7E
"Clouds really should be white at least."
All theories about what i should be understanding with this film accompany the credits as they roll off the screen. The film is over and I literally don't understand.
I love it.
It's life, you'll never get it,
and if you spend your time worrying about trying to understand how, then it will be over before you know it.
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