Simon Staho
Dag och Natt

"The sharpest pain is recognizing ourselves as the sole cause of all our woes." [Sophocles]

Usually, the beauty of a story lies in being unaware of the ending, in staying on edge, waiting to see how the story will resolve. So. Dag och Natt by Simon Staho reveals in the very first seconds how it will end: the protagonist will kill himself at the end of the film, a voiceover tells us. The rest of the film is a discovery of why he wants to take his own life.

For most people, Tuesday, September 9, 2003, was a day like any other. However, for one person, this day was special; on this very day, forty-year-old Thomas Ekman, a respected architect and family man, will shoot himself in the head at 8:03, using a Walther GSP pistol bought for this purpose.

Staho doesn't need much to tell the last day of Thomas, a respectable but divorced architect: two shots, two cameras on the dashboard of his car. Nothing else. Everything else is just dialogue and acting. Thomas and his son. Thomas and his friend, who has a relationship with his now ex-wife. Thomas and his new girlfriend. And so on. The idea of a film composed of just two shots and dialogues, almost without any action, might scare a "casual" viewer (forgive the term, not intended in a derogatory sense). But the truth is, the dialogues are excellently written, they are real, they manage to make us feel completely immersed in our protagonist's world. The words he speaks are frightening because they reveal his true personality and, at least in part, ours. We are all a bit like Thomas: we all hide our darker sides behind a facade of good and loving people.

The atmosphere is reminiscent of Lars Von Trier's films, especially those belonging to the "depression trilogy" (Antichrist, Melancholia, Nymphomaniac). And perhaps it is no coincidence that it was also produced by Zentropa, the production company of the aforementioned troubled genius. And, indeed, there are many points of connection between the protagonist of Dag och Natt and the protagonists of the three Von Trier films, beyond the most obvious problem of depression. To begin with, all four characters are depicted by their respective authors as almost entirely gloomy individuals, with few positive sides: think of how Joe, Charlotte Gainsbourg's character in Nymphomaniac, defines herself at the beginning of the film.

It's my fault: I am a terrible human being.

And Thomas too, although not in those exact words, describes himself as an extremely negative character. Both Von Trier and Staho treat their characters almost inhumanely, making their lives increasingly miserable with each passing second.

Negativity is the absolute ruler of Dag och Natt: its roughly one-and-a-half-hour duration is a slow descent into the tragedy of human existence, a portrait of the darker aspects of human nature. As Sophocles said in the quote included in the opening of this review, the most intense and profound pain one can feel is recognizing our nature as the cause of the misery we live in: this is exactly what pushed Thomas to make the decision to take his own life.

There is no tension in this film. The pace is very slow and dictated only by the characters getting in and out of the car. These 90 minutes are solid, massive, and they hit hard. Very hard. And they hurt.