Dark Days

This documentary really opened my eyes up to a world that I didn't even know existed. When I saw The Dark Knight Rises this past summer, I thought that the whole sewer palace that Bane lived in was completely ridiculous. No one can really live underground; it just doesn't happen. But clearly, after watching this video, it does happen. Those people had a whole community down there! I mean, they would go to each others houses for dinner! Nonetheless, this was still a great documentary–I see what Owen was saying about how we're interested in things we aren't familiar with.

I really liked the way this documentary was shot and edited. The black and white filter helped to make me feel like I was actually in the dark myself. It also gave me this cold feeling and made me feel like I was alone, like the people in the documentary. In the beginning, there was a lot of darkness, which kind of made me feel hopeless for the characters, but once they moved into their apartments, the shots were brighter, so I felt hopeful, like it was a second chance for them to improve their lives.

I noticed the "shaky cam" thing, too, and I thought it added to the authenticity of the documentary. No one wants to see something that has been staged. It looked like Marc Singer had just lived the life of a homeless person for a month or so and just played back his film. Another thing that added to the authenticity of the documentary was the part where one of the guys introduced Marc to his friend and said, "This is my friend Marc." Some people use "friend" loosely, but even to do so, one would have to feel pretty comfortable around a person to call them a friend.

The documentary kind of reminded me of the movie Crash, where each person had their own story but they all ultimately ended up being tied together through different events. Character building made the documentary more personable because there were several different types of people, so the audience could choose a favorite person that they were more or less rooting for. The resolution was more favorable because the audience got to see his/her favorite character have the desired fairytale ending.

This documentary is different from the other documentaries we've watched because this is the first one that really seems to have been filmed over a long period of time, which allowed the story to be resolved in the end. Also, this documentary examines the lives of multiple people at the same time.