Day Night Day Night (2006)

Simply A Masterpiece

Excellent but underrated film

Absolutely Fantastic

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

I just saw "Day Night Day Night" on cable for the first time; it was almost mundane but fascinating; it would've been even better if I hadn't read the online guide, that she was a terrorist recruit, and let it come as a shock. I only missed about 2 minutes of video making a sandwich.Through the whole movie, I was waiting for her (She?) to realize that people are worth saving everywhere, even New York City, and that she should save her own young, perky life. I was praying she'd disarm the bomb, abandon it in a bus locker, and get a new life, or go home. Or date that black guy. Am I shallow?As an atheist, I did not appreciate the ending -- it wasn't satisfying, it didn't resolve anything, or demonstrate any truth for me. Also not a Disney-enough ending for me...I _was_ impressed by the politeness of the masked guys, and the way they made her wear her seat belt. Also, more nudity would've helped! Oink! Too borderline-meaningful!

Day Night Day Night could possibly be the culprit for Joe Blow's distaste for independent films and their attempts at capturing the essence of humanity using shaky-cam directing and pitiful dialog that is painful to listen to. Almost all art house cinema appeal to a narrow audience but still retain the vital elements of film that anyone can appreciate. This movie fails in the latter respect.There are only subtle traces of character development. Please note, revealing preexisting attributes of a character is not the same as character development. For the first 30 minutes of exposition (and the next...and the next...) we learn very little about our protagonist. Perhaps we'll watch She clip her toe nails, brush her teeth, get dressed, sit, blink a few times, flip the lights on and off, look out a window, perhaps digest her pizza and silently break wind, etc, and in the end something will bond each stray element of seemingly mundane activity that we've forced ourselves to sit through into a cohesive story.Which is what this film lacks, story. The film is a penguin waddling along, hefting a fat belly of exposition, vainly flapping it's tiny wings for a takeoff. We the viewer are aware that this film is a penguin and penguins can't fly, but we're willing to discard logic for hope, hope that this penguin might get a little assistance in the way of a cliché gust of wind that would just hurry us along to the inevitable.If you'd like to watch a girl walk around chewing her cud into a boom Mic (which probably accounts for 15 minutes of run time, She chewing pizza, a candy apple, pudding, Chinese food, a soft pretzel, etc) this film is for you. For anyone wishing to make a remake, film yourself taking care of your morning routine in a hotel bathroom, walking around Times Square buying and eating food, and carrying a heavy backpack through crosswalks. That's about how exciting this entire film is. If you're like me, the only reason you watched it all is because you are anal and must watch a fim from start to finish once you've committed.It's pretty bad.

I think the so-called suicide bombers and the whole culture that creates and nurtures them (seen most notably in Palestine) are so despicable and so low-life, that any attempt to rationalize, understand, "feel their pain" deserves no respect. Any human being who is willing to take lives of innocent civilians, no matter what his/her motivation, should be treated the same way as harmful bacteria that must be eradicated.This film shows the suicide bomber as a human being worthy of sympathy. She is soft-spoken, polite, capable of human emotion, certainly not evil on personal level. Are we supposed to feel sorry for her, when she could not execute her task???Supporting characters in the movie, except the black guy in the ending, look ridiculous and very unprofessional.

Within twenty minutes of the film's beginning, I was in agony, but I didn't necessarily think my discomfort was due to bad film-making. It was extremely uncomfortable to see this woman go through mundane activities in a hotel room, without any music or distraction, knowing what the film would be about. That style of cinematography really made me feel as though I was "inside" the girl's experience and feeling as she felt. I even had to pause it a few times in order to regroup. The scene with the video was hilarious- I laughed so much, partly due to nerves, because I was so relieved to rise above my discomfort and into a moment of blissful absurdity.But as the movie progressed, it was just more of the same mundanity, and it became less interesting over time. I do not always favor narrative storytelling- but for this film in particular, I wanted to understand her character, where she came from, what happened in her life that drove her to become the person she is. The film is about a very black-and- white, well-defined political subject- a female suicide bomber throughout what is supposed to be the last day of her life. So this story's displacement from personal history (aside from a phone call to family, and a photo of her caucasian brother) feels mismatched. The snippets of her whispered prayers were very interesting, and I wanted more.I enjoyed the characterizations and mannerisms of the people who loan her change, which were revealing of subtle interpersonal dynamics on the street. Also, the man who harasses her- he is a stereotyped young African American urban male. When she jokes about a "bomb," it is like one stereotype meeting another, and that made me laugh. It is poking fun at stereotypes, though we never see a real person beneath them. I really wanted that realness to show through alongside the mocking. I eventually found myself fast-forwarding through large chunks of the DVD, and still understanding exactly what was happening. By the end, I was just begging for the film to be over. Although I must say, I really enjoyed (and again, agonized) the way the film ended. I won't give that away, but it really left me wondering.