Day Night Day Night (2006)

I hadn't heard of this movie until a few minutes before I watched it with some friends. Mostly we knew it had won a lot of awards and didn't have much dialogue. What it turned out to be is this: The total experience of an unnamed young woman (Luisa Williams) the two days leading up to her suicide bombing, with the camera focused on her for the entire movie. She is dropped off at a dingy hotel in New Jersey, where she scrubs herself rigorously clean. She receives calls from a man, giving her specific instructions to close the shades and meet in the morning. Masked men arrive to prep her, giving her more "normal", tighter-fitting clothes than what she had brought. They help her memorize a fake ID, "just in case". She is photographed wearing a military outfit and holding a gun as a kind of preemptive memorial, and/or example to future terrorists. She is blindfolded and taken to an underground facility and outfitted with a backpack explosive device, controlled by a remote disguised as an mp3 player. She takes a bus into New York city, where she walks around the 40's, enjoying pretzels and a candy apple in what she knows will be her last hours. The moment is going to happen soon. Both she and the audience wonder if she will actually go through with it.

Day Night Day Night was very slow-moving, almost grueling at the beginning. Pretty much the only dialogue is the repetitive direction given by her handlers, instructing her over and over in various matters of the operation. We find out very little about her. We don't even know her reason for doing it, or what the group she works for represents. I assume it's something religious because there are a couple scenes where she and the men pray together. Her attention to modesty and a whispered "Am I doing the right thing?"-type prayer also point to this. Her motivation is not the point (though I remain curious). The film is giving insight into both the behind-the-scenes operations of an extremist group, as well as an ambiguous portrait of the kind of person they can persuade to be a suicide bomber. We spend the duration of the movie trying to crack her face and read between the lines of her scant conversations. As it progressed, I was more drawn into the story and into the girl's possible background. However, I have mixed feelings about the ending. It was very dragged out and somehow didn't feel like enough. Overall it was daring compositionally and impressively acted (Luisa Williams had never acted before). Julia Loktev is an interesting new director, and I hope her next film will maintain the evocative mood and compassion of Day Night Day Night, but with more of a focus on story.

3.5/5