MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Days’: Beautiful But Boring

In the opening shot of Meredith Monk’s “Book of Days” (at the AFI USA Independent Showcase at the Monica 4-Plex), we watch a workman blast a hole in a brick wall. Through the hole we see a narrow street lined with ancient stone buildings; as color bleeds to black and white we’re transported to the Middle Ages. (The film was shot largely in the Southern French village of Cordes.)

The film is Monk’s attempt to bring alive everyday existence in a medieval village, centering on a young Jewish woman (Toby Newman), who experiences scary visions of life in today’s world. At several points there are TV-like interviews--the interrogator is off-camera--in which the subject is questioned about such contemporary phenomena as “stress” and “arteriosclerosis”; not surprisingly, the older man being questioned in this instance is puzzled.

Monk provides the slenderest of narrative threads but no inducement to try to keep track of it, for she embalms rather than evokes the past. There is no vitality in her film; her tableaux are decidedly not vivant , and her theme of the eternality of human nature and the comparison of plagues and other social ills past and present provide something less than the impact of revelation. “Book of Days,” which unfolds like a series of very carefully composed stills, could use lots less artiness and lots more life.

‘Book of Days’

Toby Newman:Young Girl

Pablo Vela:Grandfather

Meredith Monk:Madwoman

A Stutz Co. release of a Tatge-Lasseur Productions/ Foundations for the Arts/La Sept production in association with Alive From Off Center. Writer-director Meredith Monk. Producers Catherine Tatge, Dominique Lasseur. Cinematographer Jerry Pantzer. Editor Girish Bhargava. Costumes/Art direction Yoshio Yabara. Music Meredith Monk. Production design Jean Vincent Puzos. Sound Running time: 1 hour, 14 minutes.

Times-rated Mature (complex style, adult themes).