Images of the Everyday

Well, I finally found a movie that consists mostly of images of the everyday experience of average people in all of their mundane detail. It's Wim Wenders' documentary "Tokyo-Ga", which I highly recommend. It isn't perfect: the ending segment, in particular, struck me as rather empty. (Which is doubly disappointing because it's meant to be the climax of the movie.) But the long shots of riding in a taxi, or watching trains passing by, or a mother and child in the subway, are great. They capture the beauty and banality of everyday life perfectly. The long, unmoving, shots are obviously intended to emulate Ozu's style (the ostensible subject of the movie), but I couldn't help but think it would be possible to take similar shots of aspects of my own banal existence. The goal, of course, is transcendence of the everyday through the artistic representation of it, which Wenders achieves seemingly effortlessly. While I may not be able to achieve that goal, it would be comforting to think I might be able to achieve something a bit smaller: say, documentary honesty.