How Do You Measure a Year?

Greetings again from the darkness. We must admire Jay Rosenblatt's foresight as a father. It's a simple idea, yet brilliant in it's lasting impact. Beginning on his daughter Ella's second birthday, Mr. Rosenblatt maintained a tradition of videotaping an "interview" with her each year. This tradition, or ritual, continued through her 18th birthday. The result bounces between predictable, stunning, sad, joyful, and touching ... all in a condensed 29-minute run time.

To watch the progression of a precocious two-year old and three-year old toddler obsessing over a lollypop and make-up to a poised eighteen-year old on the brink of independence is fascinating. As a parent, we recognize the many stages ... some so cute, others so challenging ... each to be treasured.

Dad's questions include: What do you want to do when you grow up? What are you afraid of? What is power? What are dreams? What is most important to you? You get the idea. He wants to document her progression as a person and as a thinker. In addition to the lollypop and desire to wear make-up, Ella's singing voice develops beautifully as she grows into a 12-year-old who has learned sign language, and a 13-year-old fresh off her Bat Mitzvah. We see her with braces on her teeth, and as a 14-year-old toting the burden of her age. It's those last couple of years that really give us hope for Ella's future, and an insight into what the project has meant.

As a teenager, what would you have told your 25-year-old self?

I feel like the beauty of this film is in its simplicity. The joys and pains of growth and the inevitable changes that we all experience as humans. The yearly questions were simple, yet as the years progressed became more complex and, thus, the answers more intimate. You feel Ella's growth and you feel the connection with her father. In the brief half hour, I laughed out loud and dabbed at my eyes.

Other than feeling like I wanted to continue to see Ella grow and would have enjoyed more years, I can't find fault with anything in this film. I rate it 10 because I simply don't know what else I could rate it.

As "How Do You Measure a Year?" (2021 release; 29 min.) opens, director Jay Rosenblatt informs us that he filmed his daughter Ella on her birthday for 17 consecutive years, from ages 2 through 18, always asking the same questions, and that he had not looked at the footage in all those years. We then go to "TWO" as he asks seemingly very simple questions (but in fact are not simple at all) like "what is power?" and "what are dreams".

Couple of comments" when you watch someone grow up from age 2 to 18 in, literally, just half an hour, it is amazing to see the startling differences. And the shock when Ella, a child at 9, suddenly is a lot older and wiser just a year later. In the end, though, this is a love letter from a father to his daughter, and anyone who is a dad will likely think (as I surely did while watching this): "why didn't I do that with my daughter or my son?"

"How Do You Measure a Year?" was released in 2021 in various film festivals. For reasons unclear to me, this earned an Oscar nomination for Best Short Documentary in this year's Oscars (as opposed to last year's). It is currently streaming on Max, where I caught it last night. This documentary is short and sweet and moving. I'd readily suggest you check it out, and draw your own conclusion.

A father made up a set of questions to ask his daughter. He asked them on her birthday each year from her 2nd to her 18th birthdays. He didn't look back until after the last recording was made. The documentary is excerpts from those recordings.

I loved watching how much Ella changed from year to year, and how grown up she was at 9 years old. It was surprising (to me) but great that she grew to like the tradition. She and her father had a special relationship and I think doing the recording contributed to it. They probably could have continued making them for a few more years.

I'm sure these recordings will be something she and her family treasure forever. It was nice that we got to see them, too.

This is hardly a new idea. Many film makers over the years have done something similar and sone have committed even longer periods of time. SEVEN comes to mind, where the amount of time devoted to the project is so long that the original film makers died and it had to be completed by others. And here is the problem with this short. If you are going to do this you might as well put some effort into it. The questions start of revealing but soon turn boring as more or less the same 5 questions are asked, revealing very little. Tge most shocking moment occurs early on at 3. But apart from that (which is never really followed up) there's very little of interest. Second most interesting/annoying is the time between 14 and 15 where Ella suddenly picks up the incredibly annoying teenage girl habit of saying 'like' after every 3 words. This gad never been part of her vocabulary or speech patter for 12 years. I'm pleased to say she seemed to have lost is within 2 years and must have been solely due to peer pressure and the group of friends she had at that time. Mildly interesting. But that's it. 17 years of filming and nit much of interest to show for it. In other similar projects we see people grow, change jobs, meet parters, have children, fall on hard time, die... in this film all we really get is a young girls explanation of what she thinks power means growing up through the years... and it's not very profound. So a missed opportunity to ask some really insightful questions and see how Ella's attitudes changed. Having said all that what does come through most is that this was an interesting project for their family to do... does it deserve I terbational release? No. There's more interesting footage on just about every family's video camera tapes up and down the country.