| DAY ON FIRE |
 2006 - UK
Director: Jay Anania
- Reviewed by Vickie
But I still found myself moved by it and haunted in some way. Set during the hours leading up to a tragic event, the film is a collection of interconnected incidents and characters, who pass through one another’s lives briefly and seemingly without meaning. Initially, anyway. Music plays an integral part in the overall experience, as does the gorgeous cinematography and careful composition and framing of virtually every shot. Close-ups are really, really close…so much so that you can count freckles if you’d like…and takes are often long and static to enhance absorption of the visuals. The film features five characters: Najia (Carmen Chaplin), a Palestinian journalist; Shira (Alyssa Sutherland), a model with whom Najia forges a sudden but powerful friendship; Dr. Mary Wade (Olympia Dukakis), whom Najia has just interviewed about the physical effects of being near a detonated explosive; a singer named Judy (Judy Kuhn), who’s in the process of recording an album of old standards; and a mysterious man named Walter (Martin Donovan), who’s preparing himself for something (we don’t know what) and wandering the city in which they all live. The core of the film centers on Najia and Shira, two very different women who find themselves bonding very quickly after a chance meeting in a café. Initially strangers, they’re soon sharing intimate details of their lives and unknowingly changing their own destinies. The other stories in the film all splinter from theirs in some way, so the success of the project relies almost entirely on these two characters at its heart. Thankfully, both Chaplin (who’s a revelation) and Sutherland (a model in real life) are very strong, with Chaplin being the wonderful standout. I’d never heard of her before, but she’s apparently quite well-known in French indie cinema and I can see why. Beautiful and heartbreaking, she doesn’t have a huge amount of dialogue but still manages to convey a world of emotion with relatively few words and a wealth of telling expressions. It’s through her that the audience is drawn in to her co-star’s circle, as well. While the immediacy of their bond could have come off as phony or contrived, they make it work and remind us that extreme circumstances sometimes beget extreme closeness. Of the remaining three characters, only Donovan’s creepy weirdo proves memorable. He’s slightly off somehow, and the ambiguity of who he is or what he’s doing has an undeniably menacing feel, which adds another layer to the film’s tone. Unfortunately, Dukakis and Kuhn—the latter of whom at least gets to warble a few lovely tunes—get the short end of the stick and wind up somewhat forgettable. Writer-director Jay Anania has crafted something of a cinematic poem that, like a lot of poetry, may seem heady and won’t connect with everyone but will certainly find an audience—and an appreciative one—if given the chance. |
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Day on Fire isn’t an easy film to review. It doesn’t really have
a clear narrative, and is more of a meditation via images and music
than a linear story. I also openly admit that there were portions of
the film I just didn’t understand.
