Life in a Day - A Road to Home

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t watched “Life in a Day” please do watch it before you read this. You can watch it online in Youtube officially for free.

It’s one amongst a revolutionary concept that triggers and paves the gateway to the next generation in film making. The Inception for this project happened by Kevin MacDonald’s idea, supported by YouTube community and produced by Ridley Scott. “Life in a Day” is a crowd-sourced documentary film that was shot on a single day (July 24^th 2010, Saturday). It was filtered and edited over 80,000 videos that were submitted from the contributors around 192 countries with a runtime of 4,500 hours. The movie debuted in Sundance Film festival and its streamed live online officially.

I specifically watch some movies for their catchy titles. If such titles carry the word “Life” in it, I will definitely fall for it. Apart from “Life in a Day”, Some of the best titles that I’d watched mainly for the keyword ‘life’ is Tree of Life, Life is beautiful, Lives of others, Life of David Gale, Waking Life, The Double life of Veronique and the classic, It’s a wonderful Life. This big list includes Godfrey Reggio’s Qatsi trilogy too, but pardon me I haven’t watched it still.

The soul of a documentary film is well perceived and experienced by the observer with its music blending and traveling along with the characters. It should sound as a theme that represents the state of the character’s mind and beats of the heart. Harry Gregson-Williams and Matthew Herbert composed such B-E-A-UTIFUL tunes for these powerful video frames. 

The movie explores the unidentified loop amongst various phases of life, with its spectacular comparison of a day’s dawn to dusk with the life’s birth to death. Just like myths, dreams, reality, relationships, love, pain and ailment, a day has its own unique ups and down. The film opens with early day footage of a lady feeding a baby, an old woman explaining about her myth, drunken person blabbering in a hangover. It then gives a quick glimpse at the characters and their lives we are going to view about in a major portion, followed by the wake-up scenes across various geographies in different styles. The regular early morning sessions of a day like freshening up, breakfast and reading newspaper are covered in linear fashion. It’s simply brilliant. 

The narration then jumps to portray the essence and importance about the birth of a creature. Amongst all the lovely tracks I loved the track “A day In a Time”. It still plays like a sweet lullaby in my ears. It stands as a theme for the ever-good rich parts i.e. for the HD shots representing the lives of people living in higher society. 

Following by the scenes of people telling about what they do carry regularly, the musical track then slides down to country folk song, sung by three Angola women while grinding the crops. The perspective of love, how it means to people of various ages are questioned in the middle portion of the film. The way people consider about relationships, happenings of marriage in various cultures are showcased. After all these family, trust, hope, love, relationship, marriage sequences comes the fear, war and the death part in climax just like life. 

There were lots of monologue shots. The two best monologues that I liked and felt like giving a salute and standing ovation were by the African guy in a boat (Near the opening scene ) and the girl inside the car (In climax). It was so true from heart and realistic. 

The movie ends with a bunch of people doing fireworks and lantern for some ceremony and flew those in the night’s sky, lighting a positive glorious flame inside us.

 

I couldn’t be specific about my favourite character. Right from the lady overcoming cancer, bicyclist for peace Okhwan yoon, a boy who shines the shoes, a little girl reaching the heights of her aspiration, a man working overseas just for the sake of his family, a women waiting for her husband’s return, a guy trying to propose his girl friend and another guy trying to express his grandma about his love on his boyfriend, budding parkour friends, One can easily relate to any of these characters and wind up speechless with at least a drop of tear and a little smile, mutually. The movie explored the whole life after all.

In the end credits there was a shot in which a snail sliming in a round surface, surrealistically turns out to be the surface of earth. I feel like it’s a sarcastic portrayal of a human soul sliming in the surface of earth exploring the quest and mystery of life. The shot later turns out to be the inside-of a camera lens (as if the camera is buried on ground) where a cow tries to lick it and eat it up and walks past as if it leaves the space for an open sky. Millions of thoughts and hopes pondered up after the screen went down. And I started to write :)

P.S. As mentioned by @venkyyells in twitter, I wish I could have contributed a video for this stupendous classic.

Avan Ivan Review .. Strictly my perspective.. P.S. I am sorry Mr.Bala.

This review is bit outdated one, but bear me just now I have exhausted watching Avan Ivan.

To start of with, I am a big fan of Bala sir. Laughed, Enjoyed, cried, adored and even inspired from many of his films. Loved his view and approach to the new dimension, out of the box thinking and directional style. It’s simply awesome and outstanding. He deserves a big salute and standing applause for his typical casting of characters and paving a gateway for many such debut artistes.

Starting from Nandha, Pithamagan, Naan Kadavul his characters utters subtle dialogues, but carries the plot making it lively by conveying more with expressions and mannerisms. He deserves best, the national award for Best Director for his Naan Kadavul. His exploration on Agori and sinned creatures are fantabulous. Arya, Pooja the always amazing lovey couple portrayed an untouchable genre in Naan Kadavul. Such genres and typical plots can never be made, and one dares to make a feature film with that script.

Most of the People feel Bala Sir’s films as stereotypic ones about the abandoned people from society. And even considered as raw, brutal and gore types like Shino Sono or Lars Von Tier films. Yes, it is. I consoled & confronted myself to this decision after watching his Avan Ivan and left disappointed totally.

Now I am going to compare the characters and plot of Avan Ivan and Pithamagan.

‘Differentiate between Avan Ivan & Pithamagan ?’ – 5 marks

1. Arya (Kumbudran saami) – Surya (Langar)

2. Vishal (Sprouted eyes ) - Vikram (Sithan)

3. Vishal’s Mom (The lady with cigar) – Sangeetha (Lady with Pan Beeda & Ganja)

4. Villain (Illegal Cow trade) – Villain (Illegal Ganja trade)

5. Vishal’s love lady (Police Constable Baby) – Typical innocent updated Laila.

6. Jameendhar – I guess he was casted like a big GodFather but just to go Nude in the climax scene marking a history in tamil cinema.??

7. The fat boy as Arya’s buddy – Good find. Way to go, AttaBoy !!

8. Characters as Arya’s heroine, Parents, etc.. etc.. – No comments Total Bullshit.

9. Surya Cameo - Does anyone really care ?????

Both Vishal and Arya has done a good job and justified their roles. But they could’ve been characterized and written well. Vishal with his feminine acts, looks, dance and sprouted eyes like a icing on the cake for his character is brilliant. It fails to impress audience at times when he utters some unworthy, predictable, irritating, stupid dialogues on screen. Intro dance bit of Vishal in Jameendhar’s bday celebration, Arya’s funny mannerisms pulling legs of Vishal and his mom now and then are commendable.

The plot drains, dulls and totally goes out of scope, post 25 mins of movie start. And hits you digger and deeper, make you wonder what the hell is going on, in the forest fight scene just before the interval block.

Post Interval is total nuts and balls game. The scenes with Agaram, where Suriya did a cameo is total crap. If that scene was kept for marketing and promoting Agaram, Bala Sir could’ve kept in the Index or post movie credits. If that scene was made for portraying Vishal’s Navarasa talent, It could’ve made as a normal skeptic drama scene in a village Keethu Kottaai or a street show.

Bala Sir being a national award winning director shouldn’t have made such crappy scenes. Come on Sir, people out there from Hindi-Bengali-Malayalam film industry are having an eye on you to steal your zeal, fame and prosperity in directional feature. You should be so cautious being a holder of National award. Please don’t make crappy scenes like this again.

Thanks to Bala, as the hero or heroine character in this film was not left dead at the end like his previous films. But wait a second, instead 2 lame characters were left dead to meet Bala’s standards. And everyone in the story adores, respects the Kamuthikottai Jammendhaar as ‘Highness’ affectionately. That eventually raises many questions and lits the torch through millions of holes in the story plot.

What made Jammendhaar so special?

What he has done for the people?

Why Vishal and Arya considers Jameendhar as their Godfather?

Why Jameendhar is unmarried ?

What happened to his jameen property ?

Why Arya’s Heroine’s father cheated the Jameendhar ?

Why Jameendhar was casted like a big old guilty Lion, but rotten ?

Why Arya, Vishal’s dad was casted as a man with two wives?

Wont the siblings born to a single mom behave as rivals? What big difference does it make?

What happened to the 1 crore worth woods that Vishal drove from forest? Has it went in vain just like the movie plot ?

Does Vishal flavoring feminine nature, a result of Navarasa and Barathanatyam practicing?

Why Vishal thinks and feels him as an artist? Was it because of just Navarasa practice?

Cant Arya, a cheater with good physic couldn’t fight or atleast block a punch or slap?

Arya & Vishal with an ancestry as professional thefts, Did they worked together or alone before?

Was Arya’s lady love casted for just a song in the film ?

Why there was no sign of this mediocre cattle trading villain since 90 mins from movie start ?

Is this movie an eye-opener of illegal cattle trafficking?

Why Jameendhar was beaten Nude to death?

Why all Bala films end in grave with a fuming corpse in flame?

Is this actually a film?

Phewww !!! Am done bursting out with my words and senses. Queries & worries keeps on popping my head after watching this one. Ill go mad if I write more.

Avan Ivan is best for those who consider a lighter, rated, extended, stupid, strip down cut of Bala’s previous films.

All those light hearted people out there, who don’t know Bala sir and prefers to watch the ultra light shitty version of Pithamagan and Naan Kadavul, for you guys Avan Ivan is must watch. For the ardent Bala Sir fans, Passionate movie lovers it’s a strict, worth avoiding flick.

Avan Ivan – 1/ 5

It deserves one star as it’s a Bala’s film. That’s it. Over & Out.

Comments & suggestions are highly welcomed being the first review in my blog.