Film

Arriving in town by bus, an ethnically ambiguous girl listed in the credits as “She” (Williams) is driven to a New Jersey motel. Once there, she bathes rigorously, puts on a blindfold and, over the remainder of the day, is prepared by men in masks to suicide-bomb Times Square.

Asking questions about her motivation—all we know about her is that she’s traveled cross-country and claims her parents are dead—is apparently to miss the point. Day Night Day Night is a film about terrorism in which everything is reduced to the pure process of the act: being coached about a fake identity, learning how to carry a bomb. Even the title, which reflects the time span in which the movie unfolds, is abstracted beyond ideological reading.

As filmmaking, Day Night Day Night is hypnotic from the get-go. The close-range tracking shots that follow the girl, often from behind the head, are a tour de force of shallow-focus glide. The sound design (by Last Days’ Leslie Shatz) turns simple footsteps, utensil clanks and overheard conversations into grist for suspense. Loktev approaches the subject from an almost purely formal perspective (appropriately, the sequence in which She first attempts to press the button riffs on Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket), but the result seems somewhat pointlessly withholding. Such a disturbing subject cries out less for self-conscious artistry—however accomplished—than for explanation.