Dark Days

The documentary “Dark Days” was a great documentary that made its thesis very clear to me from the very beginning. I didn’t know much about homeless people, but this video did a very good job showing the struggles that the homeless go through. The video is shot around the lives of four main homeless people and basically gives them a chance to tell their story. I think it is safe to say that their own stories are the narrative for the entire documentary. It starts off by each homeless person telling how they got down there and the reasons were never good. The bulk of the story is just the homeless people surviving. They just went from day to day doing different stuff to make money or fix up their homes until they were finally able to move out.

The documentary had many characters, but they were all built up in different ways. The main way was through their own stories which they told themselves which were all filled with emotion. It was clear that the bad decisions they made in their pasts is what caused them to end up underground and speaking it aloud usually came with solemn looks and tears. For me, this shows the characters as not only homeless, but people who are striving to survive in the world like all the rest of us. I think that juxtaposing their current living situation with their past mistakes really establishes a good pathos and evokes sympathy from the viewer.

Overall, this documentary had way more shots than the other two we watched combined. I could understand many of the shot selections like the shots of the different homes from the inside then seeing what it looks like outside. This leaves you with the impression of how they got their homes to look as well as the do. There were also shots of the tunnels to show the filth that they constantly live in, but then would contrast it with a shot of them living comfortably in their homes. This concept was furthered by the constant shots of rats and trash, but that wouldn’t affect them because they were used to the rats and they used the trash to make a profit. However, not all shots made sense to me. For example, the shot of where they took dumps and how they cleaned it out. The shot was eye opening but it was very unnecessary. To me, it didn’t serve a purpose past showing how nasty homeless people can be. Another example is when Brian was taking a shower. It was just another unneeded shot because we were already told that they didn’t have running water in the beginning. Most of the shots did make since and further the point of the documentary.

Between the documentaries we watched I think this one got its point across the best. They all had characters that had something to overcome, but this one was most relatable because we will meet more homeless people in our lives than the world’s largest record collectors or NBA draft picks.