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Life In A Day REVIEWED BY DAVID D’ARCY PANORAMA
You can’t get more global than Life In A Day, Kevin Macdonald’s compilation of images of eve- ryday life, shot on July 24, 2010 by film-makers from around the world. Most of the real world does not look anywhere near this good, but the project is an ingenious, warmhearted advertise- ment for YouTube, its main delivery system. National Geographic is distributing Life In A
Day in the US, but most of its audience will see the doc on television and on YouTube, where outtakes and unused footage can also be accessed. Macdon- ald’s documentary Oscar for One Day In September (1999) could help, yet the film’s user-generated ‘have a nice day’ blandness may not inspire YouTube’s young consumer base, so get ready for other social-media sites to put more of an edge on a similar format. Life In A Day, executive-produced by Ridley and
Tony Scott, does what it says — taking you from morning to night, through eating, urinating, giv- ing birth, getting dressed and so on, from the US to England, Africa, South America, even Nepal and Afghanistan. People are asked by the film-makers to name
what they love and fear, and most say they love life. Feelings of hope and warmth ooze through the footage, distilled from more than 5,000 hours. This ambition is not entirely new, just facili-
tated by a growth hormone called technology. Selections of still photographs from around the world suggesting universal kinship had their first big moment in the New York exhibition ‘The Fam- ily of Man’, by the photographer Edward Steichen in 1955. Since then, these warmhearted amalga- mations were left to events such as the World’s Fair and corporate photo shows, though Godfrey
n 18 Screen International in Berlin February 11, 2011
UK. 2011. 90mins Director Kevin Macdonald Production companies YouTube, Scott Free Films, LG US distributor National Geographic International sales HanWay Films, www.
hanwayfilms.com Producer Liza Marshall Executive producers Ridley Scott, Tony Scott Co-producers Jack Arbuthnott, Tim Partridge Editor Joe Walker Music Harry Gregson- Williams, Matthew Herbert
Reggio revived the ‘world view’ film with the self- important Koyaanisqatsi in 1982. Macdonald’s film lacks that picture’s monu-
mentality and its overbearing score by Philip Glass. Instead, Life In A Day offers charm in its extended sections, drawn from 20 film-makers. A gentle-faced shoeshine boy in Peru explains how he goes about his work, and then tells why he loves his father. A 15-year-old in the US suffers through his first self-inflicted shave. A giraffe gives birth. So does a woman, but only after her husband faints with a thud and interrupts the filming process. As an editing job, Life In A Day is a herculean
labour probably no-one thought possible. The logistical challenge of the film and its inevitable
time constraints are tough indeed — the only tough elements of this grand tour, which has fine production values throughout. Otherwise, Life In A Day takes the soft and easy
road. Interviewees all are willing. There is no war, unless you stretch the definition to include sol- diers jogging down a road in Nepal. Animals are slaughtered but the assumption underlying those killings is that they are all part of the wondrous passage of life. Toward the end, we get a long, dark moment
with 21 deaths in a stampede at the gay and les- bian Love Parade in Duisburg, Germany, which took place that day. The worst footage of that trag- edy is not shown, but the events point to the prob- lem of the film: too much love can backfire.
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