Dark Days

          I was awed at how my opinion of homeless people changed after watching this film. Before, I had sort of felt bad for people in their situation, but this actually made me realize that a lot of their living situations were their own decisions. The people that live down in that subway are very proud of the situation they have made out of relatively nothing. Obviously each person represented in this film has reasons for ending up where they have, but the ending provides hope for the character. One says the he will “never ever ever ever never ever go homeless again. Being homeless was a nightmare.” After moving into their apartment, their attitudes changed. One evident example was the woman cleaning her room and making her bed. These people care about themselves, they were just in too unfortunate of a situation to do anything about it. I commend this director on his ability to show the change in these people over the course of the movie.

           As far as the film was actually shot, I really enjoyed the black and white view. It worked especially well in the subway, because it didn’t really matter what everything looked like. The purpose of the filming was to make us familiar with the people that we don’t’ know much about. Yes, we were supposed to notice the terrible living conditions they stayed in, but the black and white camera view made us focus more on their words rather than their surroundings. It provided a more meaningful purpose to the film. The dark contrast also provided eerie moments in the subway. In many of the scenes, the darkness fades out the walls of trash that are placed behind the people who live down in the subway. Again I believe the filmmaker wanted us to notice how it didn’t seem to bother them as much as one would think. Of course they noticed and hated the trash, but they still carried forward as if it was almost in the darkness to them.

           I would have really liked for the filmmaker to have switched to color at some point during the filming. It would have been very effective had he switched to color once everyone had moved into their apartments. I feel like I could have become more attached and personal with the characters, had the last ten minutes or so been shown in color. Color adds a sort of personality to a person, so when the video is only shown in black and white it keeps a side of the viewer in the dark as well. I can see why the filmmaker would have wanted to do this, I just don’t agree with it. I wanted to get to know the characters on a deeper level that I believe only color could have done.