Hope for Humanity

Movie: Life in a Day

My Rating: 4 stars

I was intrigued by the idea of an open source movie.  It’s a pretty cool idea because it would allow a director to collect far more footage than he or she would otherwise be able to, both for reasons of time and expense.  But, I was curious as to whether it would actually work—whether the quality would be any good.  The concept was for people from all over the world to send in footage they filmed themselves.  Filmmakers Ridley Scott, Kevin Macdonald, and Joe Walker would then edit all the clips together into a feature length film.  The instructions were relatively simple.  Participants were simply instructed to submit footage from one day of their lives, July 24, 2010.  That’s it.   There were no other thematic requests.  Contributors could send whatever they thought was important in their lives on that day.  Some people interpreted this as extraordinary or special events, and other people chose to show their normal routines.  As you’d expect, the variety is pretty spectacular. 

People submitted a very wide range of different film clips.  A lot of people had special events happening that day, like weddings, or births, but I thought the most compelling parts were seeing differences are between people’s normal routines.  The footage comes from all over the world, so it’s pretty interesting to see all the cultural differences.  I’m wondering how the filmmakers chose people to be a part of this project because some clips are from some pretty remote locales.  Even a regular working person in the United States leads a pretty privileged life compared to a child worker in Bangladesh, for example.  But, life is also very different for people in other wealthy nations.  It’s fascinating to watch.  But, the movie isn’t intended to teach any hard lessons.  It isn’t trying to make us feel guilty for complaining that our holiday spice skinny mochas aren’t hot enough.  It is designed more as a celebration of all the differences in the world, rather than as a morality lesson.

I was worried that the movie might feel really low budget and amateurish since people would be essentially submitting home movies.  But, this worry wasn’t necessary at all.  While the individual clips may not have worked on their own, the whole project was in some pretty competent filmmaking hands.  The editors are able to capture the charm of the homemade clips, while joining them together in a way that creates a strong dramatic arc, and highlights the themes that are common to all of humanity.  The end product is pretty gorgeous.  It’s one of those movies that makes you feel all fuzzy inside, and happy to be alive.  The best part of all?  You can watch the whole thing for free on the film’s youtube page.  I guess they’re only charging for hard copies.  So, it’s definitely worth checking out.