A Modern-Day LA Story
In viewing Writer/Director/Producer Vitaly Sumin’s memorable film Shades of Day, I was impressed with the way the adaptation takes Fyodor Dostoevsky’s timeless classic, White Nights, in a new and unprecedented direction. The story has inventive subplots and dramatic complications that methodically work to derive entirely new meaning. In addition, the cinematography in Shades of Day achieves brilliant visual effects designed to create a dreamlike atmosphere where seemingly anything can happen.
Magical Realism
This immersive modern-day LA story imparts an abstract, fragmented quality that almost seems to transcend reality. As the plot progresses in Shades of Day, viewers are subtly transported on a journey to a real yet imaginary world, juxtaposing back and forth in time. And thus, the environment inhabited by the characters takes on a new dimension depicted in black and white imagery that occasionally changes to transformative, colorful sequences… perhaps suggestive of a symbolic transcendence beyond the magical realism of the established setting.
Surrealism
An abstract, subjective landscape emerges that parallels a surreal world, to where scenes such as characters’ thoughts being projected through inanimate objects allow viewers to entertain these moments, absent of the apprehension one might otherwise experience in a real life setting… this is accomplished through suspension of disbelief, a cinematic technique enabling audiences to absorb all that happens in the escalating conflict, until the story reaches its resolution. The film Shades of Day is a fascinating and true reflection of the themes in Dostoyevsky’s beautiful story.
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