Day 212 - Dark City

Friday November 18, 2011

Dark City (1998) directed by Alex Proyas

What does it mean to be human? What makes you who you are? If you took away my memories and switched them with yours would that make me you and you me? Or is there something innate in us that defines who we are? These are the questions that the Strangers seek the answer to in the science fiction neo-noir Dark City.

We open with an ominous narrative telling of an alien race called the Strangers that oversees a strange and dark city. We are then introduced to a man who wakes up confused in a bathtub. A dead woman lays on the floor in the next room. He receives a call telling him that people are after him and he must flee and so he does. Did he really kill this woman? Who are these people chasing him? And more importantly, who is he? He doesn't know the answer to that question either and we must follow him as he tries to uncover the mysteries of the film piece by piece. It is a totally engrossing mystery filled to the brim with noir elements and science fiction with a little bit of philosophical musings. It is part Maltese Falcon, Blade Runner, and The Matrix. In fact the themes of Dark City and The Matrix are almost interchangeable. There is something deeply wrong with the world around us and we must figure out what. 

The man finds out his name is John Murdoch. He is married to Emma, but he cannot remember her. This is a key point of the film. If our memories turn out to not be our own, then who are we? If we have the memories of a killer does that mean you are one? Can you love someone if your memory of him or her may not be real? Emma tells John, "I so vividly remember meeting you. I remember falling in love with you. I love you, John. You can't fake something like that."

The conflict of the film revolves around the mysterious Strangers who move in and out of the city like the agents of The Matrix. They are here to observe us, tinker with us so that they could understand us, so they can learn what makes us human. Every night at midnight everyone suddenly falls asleep. The Strangers recreate the city (in dazzling special effects) and inject new memories into the sleeping people. John is immune to the sleeping spell and witnesses first hand the Strangers do their thing. He is the one person with free will and the ability to break the endless cycle of darkness over the city.

As the title would suggest, this film is dark. There is no daylight at all in the film, only in the people's memories. This dark and grimy world is similar to director Alex Proyas's The Crow or writer David S. Goyer's world of the recent Batman films. In other ways its bleak futuristic setting is similar to the world outside of The Matrix. It is all about the mood at atmosphere of the film and the bleak setting of the film matches the bleak outlook of the film. It is a perfect match.

Dark City totally caught me by surprise. I was not ready for such an entertaining yet smart film. It is an ambitious film both thematically and cinematically. A lot of times these type of films will falter and crash in the end because they fail to answer the questions with the same kind of vigor they were asked, but this film delivers on its promise. 

Grade: A

Side note: The ending of the film has an almost dream-like shot of Jennifer Connelly standing at the end of a pier. There is an incredibly similar shot of her in Requiem for a Dream.