untitled
DAY
NIGHT DAY NIGHT
Written & Directed by: Julia Loktev
Internet
Movie
Database Entry for full details
GRADE: A-
2007.
A little ways into Day
Night Day Night our nameless protagonist, who from here on
in I shall refer to as "Green Eyes" (Luisa Williams), is alone in a
motel room, waiting for a phone call. To pass the time (next time bring
a magazine) she starts toying with the bedside lamp, flipping its power
switch off and on and causing the screen to alternate between
brightness and total darkness. Day, night, day, night...the scene
serves to briefly exemplify the film's primary, underlying oppositional
forces: day vs. night, one set of daynight vs. another set of daynight,
but, most importantly, the seeming contradiction between being a
charming ingénue and a budding suicide bomber.
Green Eyes, the audience comes to slowly realize (if, unfortunately,
they haven't read any reviews or seen any trailers) is preparing to
detonate a bomb in a presumable act of terrorism, though it isn't
spelled out as such; when Day Night Day Night
opens, she's cataloguing, in a soft whisper and lightning succession,
the various manners in which people die—different diseases
and types of accidents—before she declares, "I have only one
death and I want my death to be for you." I looked around the nearly
empty theater. Who, me? Honey, don't.
But honestly she may have meant me, because there's no indication that
she means anybody else; Loktev expressly elides any mention or
explanation of the characters' motivations, and every character speaks
in an uninflected, Northern-American accent (i.e. they're not clearly
Muslim or Middle Eastern, stripping the film of any easy politics.)
Green Eyes disembarks from a bus in what we later learn is New Jersey,
where she gets a phone call from a deep and anonymous voice (Josh P.
Weinstein), giving her instructions as to where to go. She is shuttled
by an Asian man (Tschi Hun Kim) to a motel, where she waits alone for
quite a while. She cleans herself meticulously, and the soundtrack is
piercing, transforming the clipping of toenails into aural Q-tip jabs.
In due time her handlers, a handful of men in sinister skimasks, arrive
to prep her for her mission. If anything, Day Night Day Night
is a deromanticization of suicide bombing, at least its preparatory
aspects, exposing them for what they are—relentlessly
repetitive and banal, although the film manages to make them more
absorbing than they have any right to be. They grill her on the details
of the false identity with which they've provided her for what seems
like two whole reels, and when filming her video (all suicide bombers
have a video) it is a long process of trivial selections: hair up or
down? Which jacket? Which background?
Some of these scenes are actually pretty funny, as is an awkward, de
facto fashion show Green Eyes puts on, as she tries on various outfits
for her handlers—which one is best for her big day? But no
one in the theater was laughing, probably because the film has an
otherwise grim tone and is too cryptic for an audience to be sure
whether laughing at such a film among strangers would be OK; not to
mention I was in downtown New York, where suicide bomber comedies are
still something of a taboo.
What's so striking about Green Eyes is what a darling she is, and
Loktev's debut feature is essentially an experiment in the problematic
nature of cinematic identification, using the close-up to establish an
intimate connection between audience and star, regardless of her
diegetic intentions. It's manipulative, sure, but
successful—Green Eyes is endearingly dopey, as she has
difficulties using chopsticks or the motel shower; when she picks up a
pair of handcuffs, it's only moments before she's clumsily dropped
them. She's also exceedingly polite, always apologizing and saying
"thank you" to her handlers like an obsequious prostitute; she even
asks them to share in her pizza pie, one of many last suppers she
enjoys throughout the film. In tight close-up, the camera often just
lingers on her face, which gradually softens throughout the film from a
tight puss to a soft pie. Loktev and Williams implicate the viewer in
the crime she is about to commit by making her character so easy to
love. Prepare to grow accustomed to her face.
Loktev employs nearly only close-ups, particularly once she switches
locales (more on that in a moment), and Williams has the acting
fortitude to match it, endlessly delivering what Béla
Balázs called "silent soliloquies" while the tension slowly
accrues. While it immediately recalls Lodge Kerrigan's Keane
from two years ago—another creepy New York movie told in
tight close-up—Williams' face and the way Loktev shoots it
brings to mind Falconetti, and the filmmakers clearly mean to draw a
mild comparison between her apparent martyrdom and that of Jeanne
d'Arc.
Up to about the middle of the movie, Green Eyes keeps behaving as
though it's only just any other day; in the morning she uses mouthwash,
applies face cream, but the silliness of the preparatory rote is
overruled by melancholy finality, as she squeezes or spills each
bottle's excess content into the sink before tossing each item into the
trashbin. But it's only when her handler describes the pain to
come—"it'll be over so fast you won't see or hear
anything"—that it, for the first time, becomes achingly clear
that she's about to explode herself. And it's a gutwrenching
realization.
Honey, don't!
But alas, as passive viewer I have no say in the matter, though by now
I'm thoroughly invested; she is soon fitted with a bomb-filled
backpack, weighing in at fifty pounds. "Most of weight's in the nails,"
she's told, and she courteously replies that they can put more in if
they'd like, a suggestion that titillates the deaf bombmaker. (Maybe
she's not so nice after all? And yet the viewer inexplicably, like a
supportive parent, starts to root for her to succeed in whatever she
chooses to do.) She then gets on a bus and debarks at the Port
Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan, a short walk from Times Square,
her (it becomes clear) intended target.
Look, I'm well aware of a Midtown, tourist-related congestion problem,
and I don't care for much of what's playing on Broadway these days, but
I'm not sure that bombs are the answer. (Guerilla criticism?) Wandering
the streets, looking as lost as little Richie Andrusco in Coney Island
in The Little Fugitive, she spends the day buying
snacks: a candy apple, two pretzels soaked in mustard, a tomato slice,
etc., repeatedly treating herself to one last bite to eat. All the New
Yorkers are remarkably kind to her, providing accurate directions,
helping her up when she falls down and, in a restroom, advising her not
to use a particular toilet because it doesn't flush. There's even a
hilarious scene in which she gets hit on by an aggressive suitor, who
compliments her: "you got pretty green eyes and shit." It's true, baby;
whatcha gonna blow yaself up for?
But all the kindness makes her mission all the more menacing, and the
scene in which she stands at a busy street corner and prepares to
detonate, fingering her activation switch, is excruciatingly tense, as
the soundtrack disappears save for her heavy breathing, and the camera
slowly cuts to close-ups of the unaware New Yorkers. (Loktev is adept
at creating tension, as in another scene in which Green Eyes waits at a
long red light and the beat of a neighboring car's turn signal provides
an unbearable tick tock tick tock.)
(spoiler warning) By the end, what should be a horrifying tale of
homicidal intent turns into a pitiable story of personal failure; her
bomb winds up to be a dud and, not having any method of getting in
touch with her handlers, she winds up as just one more lonely
transplant who came to New York to make a name for herself and didn't.
When her second attempt to detonate the bomb fails, there's a real
sense of disappointment in her and in the audience. "Why don't you want
me?" she enigmatically asks, sounding like the Salieri of suicide
bombers, and in turn an indifferent New York City looks back at her
dispassionately. (/spoilers)
Day Night Day Night and its central character ought to be
repugnant, but instead they're sympathetic and brimming with pathos.
There's something van Sant-esque about its refusal to provide us any
causes, acknowledging only effects. Suicide bombers, however abhorrent,
are people too, full of contradictions, and the movie, a complicated
character study, ferrets out Green Eyes' goodness, almost sweeping her
malicious intentions under the rug and out of the way. Irresponsible,
maybe, but it's still gripping and fascinating filmmaking.
--
Henry Stewart
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