Everyday (II) (2019) User Reviews

Diminishing returns

[Igenlode Wordsmith · 5/10 · 10 June 2007]

This film is highly atmospheric and entertaining the first time round, with its montage of images giving a vivid and slyly humorous evocation of 1920s London (although the very American stock-market listing soundtrack is somewhat incongruous when paired with double-decker buses, suburban tank engines, and London policemen!). The second time round, in abbreviated form, serves to make explicit the joke in the title; this isn't just a typical day, this is all the days of the office-workers' life, in their remorseless identical tread. The third time round serves perhaps to reinforce the point.

But from the point of view of actual entertainment, the returns drop rapidly with each successive repetition of the same footage, until this viewer, at least, felt like screaming "All right, all right -- I got the point about five minutes ago, I'm not stupid!" If you can wait it out (since this was the second time I'd seen the film, I'm afraid that this time round I simply shut my eyes and leaned back in my seat), the succession does finally end as everything melts down in the finale.

I do wonder how many people who are (unlike me) in a position to fast-forward through the picture actually wait that long, though. This film could happily lose five minutes or so.

Repetitive Monotony

[Tornado_Sam · 20 January 2022]

The above is essentially a summary of the main object of this Hans Richter film, executed, of course, with a fair if not great amount of abstractions. It seems that after playing with abstract shapes in the Rhythmus films and exploring abstract photography in movies such as "Film Studie", Richter wanted his approach in this film to be less about the technique and more the idea. These previous films, while interesting to see in themselves, hardly stretched themselves to support a greater idea or emphasize a certain concept through their abstraction - "Everyday", on the other hand, has a message that becomes almost painfully clear just through one forcing oneself through the entire sixteen minutes.

"Everyday" portrays in a vividly accurate manner the tediousness of work in Germany during the late 1920's, simply through a montage of images. People get up for work, trains arrive, workers go to their stations and complete the monotonous tasks of their jobs. Most of it is portrayed through timelapse shots put together in rapid succession, creating an interesting montage. As the work day ends, the same footage is then recycled to show a second day, and then again to show a third day, making the film purposefully dull to illustrate the repetitive monotony of the workplaces. It's a solid concept executed effectively and shows Richter's skill and understanding of what to do with the medium shining through - although the man just couldn't help throwing in a few stop-motion sausages in the middle to make it more exciting.