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Day Night Day Night
R1 - America - Genius Products Review written by and copyright: Noor Razzak and Stevie McCleary (20th October 2007). |
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The Film
 The back of the DVD case for "Day Night Day Night" proclaims the film is an 'unsettling, intense, and completely unpredictable viewing experience.' I've been around long enough to know that that is code for 'boring wank surrounded by crud we call arty in an attempt to convince our investors we didn't just steal their money and make a student film...a poor student film, with its only redeeming features being...uh...we sure shot a lot of footage. That counts for something, right?' Let's see how this pans out, shall we? We start off watching as a girl (Luisa Williams) is getting off a train. Now she's walking, some more walking. She's still walking. Walking...she's walking, she's walking, she's walking, she's walking, she's walking...wait, she has stopped. And... she's walking, she's walking, she's walking, she's walking...hang on, I think I missed something there. Let me go back. Wait...no...no, my mistake. She's walking, she's walking, she's walking, she's walking...she's getting into a car. Alright, this is a long car ride. Have I mentioned that there are no music cues? Or dialogue? Good, because that'll help me fill in my word count. She's now in a hotel room. I'm wondering if she's a prostitute. Oh, according to the DVD case, she is a 19-year-old suicide bomber. Fancy that. Half an hour later we find out that this is indeed the truth. There has been about three lines of dialogue so far, all spoken so quietly I had to turn up the volume twice as loud as I normally would. On the plus side, most of the shots of the main character brushing her hair or sitting in the dark last for so long that you can press fast forward and reduce them to just slightly longer than bearable length. Things start to warm up a bit when she gets bombed up and starts wandering around the populated city. And by 'warm up' I mean she 'eats a lot of candy'. This film should be banned purely on the basis that I've been craving a giant mustard covered pretzel for the last hour and a half. We get a very tense moment when it comes time for her to set off the bomb. Now, we don't know her name or why she is doing this...actually we don't know anything. So that's helpful. Anyway, what I was going to say is that we have a nice set of images as we see varied shots of wedding rings, people clutching lottery tickets, listening to iPods. A real sense of terror is conveyed nicely here by the director. If only it didn't go on for longer than it took for me to heat up my dinner. It lost the brilliant tension that had built by dragging it out too long. Not only that, but we see a similar montage to this one several times before the film is done. You really are left with no other option than to skip through the scene as it just comes across as a waste of time. Apparently this was partly based on a true story. I'd be pretty interested on finding out where the story came from, and the history of it. Just to find out...something. If this film leaves you with anything, it's a severe lack of something. Unless its goal was to create a sense of how mundane the two days leading up to exploding yourself is. If so: congratulations, and congratulations to the black actor who gave one scene some real energy when he kept trying to hook into the bomber. It was funny and creepy at the same time. You'll want to ignite a bomb yourself if you watch this. I can see what they were trying to do here, and it's an interesting concept. I'm sorry, but it failed here. Better luck next time.
Video
Presented in a widescreen ratio of 1.78:1 this anamorphic transfer could have been much better, the major problem with this transfer is that it has combing issues which is a result of the footage being interlaced rather than progressive. This is a serious problem right from the outset. Additionally the film image appears flat and some softness is at times a problem as well with occasional scenes possessing consistent sharpness. On the plus side blacks are bold, shadow detail is consistent and the image is relatively clean.
Audio
A single English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo track is included, there's not a lot of dialogue in this film, hardly any music and not much happens, so a 5.1 mix would have been a wasted effort. This Stereo track would normally be adequate but I found it mixed way too low and more often than not I have to pump up the volume just to hear what was being said, it also doesn't help that just about everyone that appears in this film talks as if they have a sock shoved in their mouths. As expected being a stereo track there is virtually no depth to the sound and range is limited. Optional subtitles are included in both English for the hearing impaired and Spanish.
Extras
First up is a feature-length audio commentary by the film's writer/director Julia Loktev. I normally enjoy listening to commentaries, often my favorite extras are these track that provide information on the production, although Loktev provides a plethora of background on the genesis of the project, the newspaper articles the script was based on, the intense amount of research undertaken for the script, casting unknown actors and the reasons behind that she also comments on what behavioral attributes of suicide bombers that peak her interest among other various production issues I still felt that throughout all that the track was about a boring as it could be. Perhaps it's her uninterested soft spoken monotone voice that made everything seem so uninteresting. My only advice for next time is to sound like you actually have some passion about your own project when talking about it, or maybe it would have been best to include other members of the production to accompany Loktev? Next up is the film's original theatrical trailer which runs for 1 minute 52 seconds. Rounding out the extras are a series of start-up bonus trailers for: - "You Kill Me" which runs for 2 minutes 33 seconds. - "Pierrepoint: The Last Hang Man" which runs for 2 minutes 23 seconds. - "Sorry, Haters" which runs for 1 minute 41 seconds. - "After the Wedding" which runs for 2 minutes 19 seconds.
Overall
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