Day Night is coming
Julia Noktev's Day Night Day Night , which is screening for the third and final time this evening at the Telluride Film Festival and which will also screen at the Toronto Film Festival, is developing a certain kind of elitist heat that will be reaching critical mass as it begins to be seen during the second phase of the Toronto fest. The terms I'm hearing are "Bressonian" (as in Robert Bresson) or "Dreyer-like" (as in Carl Dreyer).
A certain blowhard know-it-all was spreading the word on this film a couple of weeks ago, but now that it's been seen and chewed over at Telluride it feels more real. Shot by Benoit Debie (Irreversible), it's about a 19 year-old girl (Luisa Williams) of indeterminate origin andintense eyes who's in New York City to do something. The big "what" is answered about two thirds of the way through. I'm not going to spoil at this stage, but it's not going to stay a secret for very long. Think Paradise Now, only much artier.
Posted by Jeffrey Wells on September 3, 2006 at 9:07 AM
comment #1
Goulet
says ...
Mentionning Paradise Now pretty effectively spoils it, no?
Posted by Goulet
at September 3, 2006 10:55 AM
comment #2
JD
says ...
This is a really strong film, but it's a bit wacky to compare it to Bresson or Dreyer (that would be more suitable for Bruno Dumont's Flandres, easily the best film I've seen that's playing Toronto). It's really just a minimalist, highly non-verbal film that with-holds a lot from its audience until the last 30 minutes or so. It's not terribly arty or pretentious. It's a very straightforward and literal-minded film, save some nice visual formalism...but it kind of peters out in the last 10 minutes.
And Wells, when you call intelligent film critics "elitist," you're playing the same dumb-everything-down game that right wingers play to pretend that George W. Bush's weaknesses are a strength. Smart is good. Dumb is bad. End of story. You can't just pretend that "dumb is bad, smart is good...and anyone smarter than me is bad." Anyone who saw Tropical Malady knows that Apichatpong Weerasethakul is an infinitely more significant filmmaker than Marc Forster, Todd Field or just about any other filmmaker on your highly American/English language-heavy to-see list.
Posted by JD
at September 3, 2006 10:59 AM