Day Night Day Night

“Day Night Day Night” is a film whose evident purpose is to show how terrorism isn’t limited to any particular religion, gender, or ethnicity. Writer/Director Julia Loktev makes that painfully clear during her opening scene as we witness a 19-year-old girl (with no obvious race or accent) preparing to become a martyr for an unknown cause. The girl known only as “she,” spends most of her time in a gloomy hotel room waiting for the right moment to carry out her mission. Since it’s filmed mostly in a pseudo-documentary style, we are given one too many mundane shots of her brushing her teeth, taking a bath, and sitting around doing absolutely nothing. The only possible explanation I could muster is that Loktev wanted to keep things as normal and tranquil as possible as she slowly builds toward the climax.

That is, of course, the entire reason for investing in a film such as this. No matter how unhurried things felt, I always found myself captivated by the very essence of what this girl was going through. On the outside, she was calm, cool, and collected, but inside, she was spiritually and emotionally knotted. In her big screen debut, Luisa Williams turns in a performance of both frightening ease and haunting intensity. Her subtle facial expressions combined with Loktev’s delicate camera work more than compensate for the film’s lack of dialogue. She hits the right note in every scene and brings an element of lugubrious realism that is often misused in other films.

At times, this plays like a How-To on suicide bombing, but the main focus continues to be on this girl’s conscious decision to give her life for something she believes in. Her fear is palpable and every step she takes is one step closer to the end. What that end is exactly, I can’t really say. Her arrival in Times Square is marred by a sudden anxiety attack, so whether or not she actually goes through with it remains to be seen. For the final scene, Loktev toys with her audience at many points and uses dizzying camera angles to hopefully take their minds off the fact that nothing critical is happening. Luckily for her, the strength of Williams’ performance is enough to carry the film to the finish line. As for any political connotations, I’ll let you be the judge.

- *** out of 4