On Sunday, after what had felt like a slow, largely wasted day, Rachelle and I watched a movie before going to bed. Ridley Scott, famous for directing Blade Runner, Alien and Gladiator amongst other things, produced this film in conjunction with YouTube. It was called Life in a Day and it was a pastiche of over 80,000 video submission from almost 150 countries that people had sent in of themselves on July 24, 2010.
It’s a beautiful movie, one that’s vast in scope yet microscopically focused on singular moments. Authentic and effortlessly inspiring, it ended with footage of a young woman, shot from the interior of a car in night-vision, speaking into a hand-held camera. She looked drained, as if saddened by the defeats of the day as she told the audience about herself. She didn’t feel exceptional in any way, stating that she was merely a normal girl living a normal life, a boring person who really had nothing unusual or interesting to say, but through this project she’d hoped to show the world that maybe there was something special in her, that her voice might be important.
More than anything she had wanted something remarkable to happen on July 24th. She wanted to be witness to a miracle, to create something of beauty or merely to will something astonishing into existence, but with some resignation she admitted that nothing special happened, that it was just another pedestrian day in her Plain Jane life. Yet regardless, she still felt that something important, even remarkable had happened. And as she’s saying this a beautiful lightning storm—presumably the reason she’d taken shelter in her car—was unfolding around her as if a divine reminder of the beauty and singularity of her life.
In this movie we see July 24th unfold all over the world– from so many different perspectives– and it was all glorious and tragic and remarkable, so full of love and tenderness, that it reshaped the day I had just experienced, too.
And from that imagined waste I recalled our dog chewing her ball in the tall and cooling grass, dandelion puffs floating down from the sky in slow motion. And an old man, smiling and bow-legged, chatting up three young Asian women on the sidewalk. He’s still got it! Later, a young couple on Cherry Beach, struggling along on their rented Bixi bikes, maybe falling in love and creating a day that neither one of them would ever forget.