July 24, 2010. The most ordinary day on the planet Earth, assembled from video clips sent in by YouTube users, who were asked to make a video describing a day in their lives. The result is the first global film, culled from 4,500,000 hours of footage.
No, it’s not the stories and plots we recall from our favorite movies, but, say, the two elusive seconds in which the Milky Way is reflected in the eyes of children while their fathers steer boats out to sea. This is the kind of footage few good filmmakers are willing to stalk for the rest of their lives, and without any guarantee of success.
But anyone can get them, and then film critics have a good excuse for their profession. “Life in a Day” is almost entirely composed of such moments – McDonald and Scott had only to deftly flick scissors: the film, in fact, is not even an ode to the tenth muse, but to the eleventh, responsible for the art of gluing together the beautiful from the trivial.
Watching the film, you get goosebumps, either laughing or wiping away your tears, an indescribably beautiful sight. I would even say that Life in a Day should be prescribed to people as a “must-see.” It is possible to go into global melancholy, or it is possible to drastically reconsider life priorities, depending on one’s desire.
The film was made by people all over the world in 2010: back then every fifth user didn’t have a GoPro in his pocket, every third person didn’t have an SLR to record colorful videos, there weren’t even iPhones with slo-mo function. Of course, if you made a film now, it would have a lot more beautiful shots, but it would look more artistic, which would take away the main thing – the effect of “accessibility”, the atmosphere of touching other people’s lives, sincerity and simplicity.
The beauty of “Life in a Day” is that it is a universal spectacle. You can watch it every year and notice something new every year. It’s not even a movie, it’s more like one of the most honest answers to the question “what is the meaning of life” and everyone will have their own answer.
