‘Life in a Year’ Director Mitja Okorn talks Love, Life, and Music Videos
“The most important thing to realize is what do you want to do in life and who do you want to be.”
Cara Delevingne and Mitja Okorn on the set of LIFE IN A YEAR.
LIFE IN A YEAR, the new film from director Mitja Okorn, stars Jaden Smith and Cara Delevingne. The film follows the story of a teenager named Daryn (Smith), a hard-working, clean-cut high schooler who works diligently with his father (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) to plan out his life and get accepted into Harvard University. He meets a girl named Isabelle (Delevingne), a blue-haired, spontaneous, rebellious-type who catches his attention. Eventually, the two begin dating, and Daryn learns that Isabelle has been diagnosed with cancer and only has one year to live. He forfeits all of his plans, much to his father’s dismay, and dedicates his time to creating a lifetime of milestones and memories for Isabelle in a year.
The film, which is produced by both of his parents, Will and Jada, was written with Smith in mind for the lead role. After going through several rounds of auditions, it was Okorn’s assistant who recommended Delevingne for the role. Okorn watched several of her films and fell down a rabbit’s hole of “funny moments” from Delevingne on YouTube and realized that he had, indeed, found his Isabelle. Once he found his perfect actors, he worked for about two years changing and adding elements to the script. Over one hundred milestones were created for the two characters, and Okorn added in the idea of a road trip to solidify the bond between the two characters. “I had some ideas of how to make it [the script] better,” he said. “They asked what was the most important thing I wanted to add, and I said, ‘Milestones are cute, but I want them to go on a road trip.’” Knowing that Isabelle as a character would rebel against the idea of milestones, he felt that the road trip was a symbol of character growth. “Daryn, in this film, is a naive child in the beginning, and then grows up and becomes a man,” Okorn says. “A child would come up with milestones, but a man would just take her to a beautiful place . . . milestones are what he thinks she wants, but the road trip is what she really does want.”
Jaden Smith and Mitja Okorn on the set of LIFE IN A YEAR.
Another important element in the film was creating a symbolic aesthetic for the audience to be able to visually follow along the journey of the characters. Isabelle wears many different wigs throughout the film, and the colors of the film represent different stages she is at in her relationship with Daryn. When she first meets him, her wigs are blues and greens which imply her cold and standoffish attitude towards him. As their relationship progresses, the colors soften to pinks and whites, which symbolize not only her affection for him, but her guard being let down as she grows to trust him. He smiles as he recalls the amount of work that went into making the wigs, from designing them, to making them, to picking the colors. “The first [wigs] were to make her noticeable, in a way, and the last couple of ones were because they [Daryn and Isabelle] were so pure and innocent,” Okorn says. “In the beginning, she’s hiding from something. That’s why there’s all these wild colors.”
Daryn’s relationship with his parents, specifically with his father, can be described as “complicated” in its most simple terms. His parents have worked hard to earn their way from poverty to prosperity, and it is part of why his father pushes him so hard so as not to have to grow up like they did. Whenever Daryn is at his house, or around his parents, the color palette onscreen is very bright, bleak, clean, and crisp. Everything has a place, there is no clutter in sight, and it is stark in contrast to when he is around Isabelle. Whether it be her colorful, ever-changing hairstyles, her zany wardrobe, her messy apartment, or the neon and gritty rough part of town she lives in, the color palette and overall look of the film when he is around her feels almost like a different world. Speaking to this, Okorn says,
“The one thing I said was, I don’t want it to feel superficial, usual, mechanical, fake . . . there are so many films that feel like [they are] made in a factory. I want it to be gritty, edgy, dirty, even...I just want it to be real. Like life".”
Jaden Smith and Mitja Okorn on the set of LIFE IN A YEAR.
A unique privilege that Okorn had was the opportunity to first make this film in the form of a music video. “When we finished the script and we had the actors, we needed to get some money,” he says. “Then this band came to me—a Polish band—they came to me and said, ‘We need a music video.’” Okorn initially turned them down as he no longer shot music videos, but he listened to their song and realized it fit the film perfectly. “I called my producer and said, ‘Listen, these guys want a music video. Can I take our script and make a five-minute version of it?’” His producer agreed, and with a five-thousand dollar budget, he flew himself, his crew, and the two leads to go shoot with just a single camera and a few lights. The low-budget, guerilla-style filmmaking of the music video created unexpected beautiful moments that he knew he wanted to keep for the feature length film. “The motel scene is in the music video,” he begins. “It was shot in a trailer. We didn’t have any lights. We lit it from the outside light . . . and it was the most beautiful thing ever. So, I wanted to recreate it in the film.” Even the sweet moment during the wedding scene where Isabelle stands barefoot on Daryn’s feet as they share their first dance together was born from a moment in the music video. Broken glass on the ground had forced them to improvise, and the idea to have the actress dance on his feet was born, and it is these small moments which connects the audience to these characters.
As happens in the industry sometimes, a couple of obstacles caused the film’s release to be delayed. It had its initial screening for audience reactions back in 2017, and is now finally being released wide for everyone to enjoy. In a time of COVID-19, where people are really stepping back and re-evaluating what is most important to them in life, does Okorn feel that his film ultimately came out at the right time? He laughs and says that based on similar audience reactions from then versus now, he is happy that the film seems to have aged well. “I hope this film gives hope,” he says. “So many people say that this movie changed their life, because first of all, they want someone to love them like Daryn does . . . and secondly, you only live once, which is a cliche, [but] that you should live your life to the fullest, love everyone around you, and just enjoy life.”
Cuba Gooding, Jr., Mitja Okorn, and Jaden Smith on the set of LIFE IN A YEAR.
LIFE IN A YEAR is available to watch now on Amazon Prime. Check out our full audio interview with Mitja Okorn below.