Day Night Day Night (Loktev, 2006)
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Here is how you make a movie about a tragic event and make critics love it.

1)   Choose a controversial and tragic event, real or based on reality: Examples can be, 9/11, terrorism, school shooting, or gay sex. Just kidding on the gay sex one, gay people!
2)   Have no opinions on why it happened. Not judging others is a nice thing, so take it to the complete extreme. Let your movie make no judgments on anything, let it not explain the actions or offer any possible explanations, make everything vague, have no opinions, and say as little as possible. Critics dig that shit, because they’d be like, the director is being unbiased, oooh.
3)   Focus on the banality of life, so that critics can swoon on how you are not exploiting the material and you are showing how realistic it is. You can use a lot of time on long shots of doing normal stuff like sleeping but make sure most of the crucial, non-normal stuff is kept to a minimum.

That’s it. You’ll have your perfect critic movie. Here is how director Julia Loktev did it with the subject of suicide bombing with her movie, “Day Night Day Night”. A young girl is being prepared to carry a school bag with a bomb inside it, and go to Times Square and boom, kill people. The movie focuses on the two days.

Sounds exciting and controversial and important? It’s not. We know nothing about the girl, her motivation, the motivation of the others, we have no idea where she is from, what group she is in, how she was recruited, nothing. Most of this seems to be the right way to go, according to critics. I’m fine with keeping her motivation and the group vague, as long as they could have replaced it with something else. But what else do we have? We have long shots of the girl brushing her teeth or eating an apple.

And it does not even seem realistic. Everyone is extra, EXTRA polite. The communications between her and the masked trainers and terrorists is very gentle and polite, with lots of “thank you” and “good morning”, like they are preparing to go to office or something. The director might think she is smart shit for telling us how routine such a horrific action can be, but that’s bullshit. I’m not a suicide bombing expert, but I’m sure there is some energy and motivation building in it, to make sure that people go ahead, not a routine that feels boring.

This movie is a waste. This is like the school shooting movie of “Elephant”. I can’t think of a similar style in regards to child rape, but if you’re thinking of doing one, here is my idea, feel free to use it. Make the guy a normal, average guy. Spend 40 minutes with him just doing normal stuff, like playing video games, going to office, talking to his friends, brushing his teeth, eating food. Ensure that it is all long shots, that is, if he goes to take a piss, don’t cut, capture the full thing. You can throw a few hints regarding child rape here and there, like maybe a small glance at a boy. But don’t overdo it!! Basically, dedicate maximum 30 seconds to it for the first 40 minutes. Okay, now have a scene where he asks a boy in his car, and drives home. Film from outside, the man takes the boy inside the house, but we don’t follow in. The view should remain stationary from outside, and remain so for five minutes, so that critics later on can write about how TENSE it was and they’ll congratulate you for not exploiting it and sometimes not seeing it is more effective. After five minutes, have the man take the boy out, and drive him somewhere else. The rest of the movie is back to banality.

That’s it. You’ll be loved.

No one else will like your movie though, except a few elitists here and there, but don’t worry too much. If anyone criticizes it, those fans will just tell them to go watch their Hollywood movies with explosions and car chases, because they’re too moronic to understand it.

1/5