Review: Life in a Day

     On July 24^th 2010, 4500 hundred hours of video were uploaded to Youtube as part of the “Life in a Day” project. The idea behind the project is to have people from all over the world film themselves and then take that footage a stitch together a comprehensive glimpse of what life was like in the early 21^st century. Footage was uploaded by 80,000 people from 192 countries and while the film is thematically impressive, it lacks a narrative and instead falls into pretension.

     The film is organized somewhat chronologically, beginning in the early hours of the morning, continuing to people waking up and going about their morning routine, going to work, and eventually going back to bed. The film also organizes footage according to the cycle of life. Along with the images of the sun rising in the morning, we see scenes of pregnancy and birth. As the film winds down and the sun sets, we see people dealing with death. The editing is very fast paced, with most of the submissions being shown only for fractions of a second. The footage that is focused on serves largely to illustrate the dualities of life on earth. We see people living in the worst conditions in third world countries paired with a guy proud of his new Lamborghini convertible, images of people healthy with those who are terminally ill, footage of people happy and sad. One of the more striking examples of this is an army wife preparing for a Skype date with her husband serving overseas spliced together with a Afghani photographer documenting life in Kabul. Both show the impact of war on those involved at home and abroad. Some scenes are funny: an elderly couple renewing their vows is a highlight. Other moments are sickening. There is some footage of workers in a slaughter house killing a cow and slitting it's neck and another of people getting trampled to death at the Love Parade 2010 music festival in Germany.

     The biggest flaw of the film is it's lack of narrative. The submissions to the project weren't long enough to provide much more than a quick glimpse into the life of that person. The film quickly shifts it's focus from one clip to the next that we don't really become attached to any of the people we are introduced to. The only person the film continuously returns to is a Korean man who has been cycling his way around the world for 9 years, and was filming himself in Katmandu, Nepal. He reflects on life and the state of the world, particularly the conflict between North and South Korea. Because of the lack of narrative, the film just stagnates. The final bit of footage is a girl talking about her day at work just before midnight. She had been waiting all day for something interesting to happen to share for the film, but nothing did. She states the point that the film probably set out to show: amazing things happen every day, just probably not to you. In the end this film is nothing more than a bit of pretentious eye candy making heavy handed statements about the nature of live on earth.  

If you care to check it out, the whole film is available to view on Youtube for free.

Rating: 4/10 - Immoral