DARK CITY
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: This film is an incredible visual
experience and a story unusually dense in ideas.
Still, I defy anybody to see it only once and still
recall the full arc of the story 24 hours later.
The style is much closer to Japanese anime or comic
book than it is to film. Characters are little
more than flat paper stand-ups, but the visual
aspects of this cinema comic book are a real
knockout. This is a film that goes in for quantity
of ideas though not necessarily quality. You will
not see too many American films that are a lot like
DARK CITY. Rating: 7 (0 to 10), +2 (-4 to +4)
It was a dark and ominous night. The city was a dangerous place that had no pity for the weak. An alien race "older than time" but now on the brink of dying out had came to the city to observe humans hoping to learn something that would enable them to save themselves. John Murdoch awoke in a bathtub to find he had no memories and there was a murdered woman nearby with mystical symbols carved into her body. Somewhere a clock was striking midnight.
The images and the ideas come and go almost that fast in DARK CITY. This is a film that owes its style not so much to other films but to European New Wave comic books. A new idea or a piece of visual excitement flashes by the viewer at a rate of about two a minute. This is certainly an impressive style of film-making but it does carry with it a risk. In a story in which anything can happen at any time it is hard to care what is happening at any moment. DARK CITY will never be remembered as a thumping good story, but the film has other rewards. Stylistically the film is a lot like CITY OF LOST CHILDREN or BRAZIL, but without the sympathetic characters of those films. So the dynamic of the film is not to make the viewer feel much empathy for the characters but just to wonder what will happen next, what will it mean, and what will it look like. In fact, the city itself is the most engaging and certainly the most dynamic character of the film. The city looks like something out of the 30s and it is invested with aliens, human-looking but pale and hairless dressed in black bowlers and black fur-collared coats like the aristocratic gangsters in Fritz Lang's M.
Alex Proyas wrote the story, co-wrote the screenplay, and directs. His CROW was a nimble translation of comic book style to the wide screen. DARK CITY goes much further in his stylistic experiments. In rapid flashes his story piles idea on idea without stopping longer than a quick muse to think about the implication. The viewer and the characters is doused in a shower of plot complications and new ideas with little time to consider them. As one complains "I have a jigsaw puzzle in front of me and each time I rearrange the pieces it still doesn't make any sense." But as with THE BIG SLEEP, what is most important is not the understanding of the plot but in the going along for the ride. This is a study in mood and texture and a very different sort of science fiction film from STARSHIP TROOPERS.
But visually the film is often stunning. The city has a film noir-ish feel that fully reflects the title. Rufus Sewell of COLD COMFORT FARM and DANGEROUS BEAUTY does not get much chance to register much emotion besides bewilderment. He becomes a sort of place-holder and a cipher in more ways than one. Keifer Sutherland is a terrific half-mad scientist who might have been at home in DR. X. Jennifer Connelly is terrific in the scenes as a torch singer, but registers the same lack of depth as Sewell otherwise. William Hurt is a Bogart-like police inspector with nearly the same style. Rounding out the cast are the always enjoyable Richard O'Brien and Ian Richardson as white-faced aliens.
This is a film with the texture of nightmare. It does not pay off in ways that most films do so it will appeal only to a narrow audience. But for what it is it is very nicely realized. It certainly is one of the most enjoyable surprises of the new year. I rate it a 7 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
I wonder if I am the only viewer to see strong parallels between this film and Harlan Ellison's OUTER LIMITS episode "The Demon with a Glass Hand." (I rather suspect that Ellison will. But then he managed to convince a jury that TERMINATOR borrowed from his "Soldier from Tomorrow" story rather than the more obvious choice of the science fiction film CYBORG 2087.)
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1998 Mark R. Leeper
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