Hooptober XII | 18/31 | Decades 9/9 | 1990s | Dreams.</a</b>
This review is for the Director’s Cut.
It’s night out, and the stars are beautiful. But the penumbra of some field encloses the city in the permanent darkness of a starless night. Down, down, into the multi-layered city, to Dr. Daniel Schreber ambling across a bridge, where he checks his pocketwatch and watches the second hand click to 60 and stop, the minute and hour hand both locked at 12. Somewhere in the city, inside a run-down hotel, John Murdoch awakens in a full bathtub. He sees his clothes set out for him on a chair in the bathroom. He dresses, finding keys and a briefcase labeled K.H. in the closet. Inside, a postcard for Shell Beach triggers a distant memory, but the ringing phone interrupts his train of thought.
On the other end is Dr. Schreber, who explains to John that his memory was erased in an experiment, and that people are coming for John. He must leave now. John drops the phone when he realizes a woman is dead on the floor, her body covered in spirals cut into the flesh. He manages to get away just as a group of men with white faces and trench coats arrive. In the hotel lobby, the clock is stuck at midnight, and everyone appears asleep. Suddenly, the clock dings and everyone awakens.
Inspector Frank Bumstead receives a call. He arrives at the same hotel that John left. In the hotel room, they find the dead woman, the most recent in a long line of murdered sex workers. Under everyone’s breath is the name Walenski, a detective who seems to have gone off the deep end, believing everyone is being watched and controlled. But for now, they focus on finding John, who they think is their killer.
John wanders the streets like a rat in a maze, trying to remember his name. Following a clue to an automat, he finds his wallet trapped behind an automat window. He puts out his hand, as if instinctively, and the vending window breaks, allowing John to grab his wallet. Back on the streets, the men in trench coats find John. They tell John to sleep, as if to hypnotise him, but John is unaffected. So, they draw switchblades. Like with the wallet, John’s mind takes over, and he can manipulate the world around him.
The film follows John as he uncovers his identity and the bizarre machinations of this city trapped in darkness.
I feel like I'm living out someone else's nightmare.
The film explores the nature of identity. John is a man without memories, but is also the subject of a case of mistaken identity as the police tie him to murders he knows he couldn’t commit. But he isn’t the only one with memory troubles. Detective Walenski went off the deep end because he started looking at his memories more and found them fracturing under scrutiny. If we alter our memories every time we retrieve them, then how can we trust them? If we cannot trust our memories, which serve in part to formulate who we are, then how ephemeral is our notion of self? Is this why we construct the concept of a soul?
The city has that sprawling, multi-storied expansiveness of Metropolis, or, more contemporaneously, the Batman movies. The Art Deco-inspired architecture blends beautifully with the 40s film noir costuming and sets, not unlike an Edward Hopper painting. Also compelling is the underworld of pale men and their German Expressionist lair. The use of miniatures makes everything feel more tangible and gives the city a greater sense of place than the CGI nightmares we’ve grown accustomed to these days. That’s not to say the movie doesn’t use CGI, but it’s sparingly.
The green tinge to everything is one of many comparisons one could make between this movie and The Matrix. To avoid spoilers, I won’t enumerate them, but it’s worth mentioning that both movies were filmed at the same studio, and The Matrix even used some of Dark City’s sets.
My biggest complaint would probably be the length. While I appreciate the need for the occasional action set piece, the action starts to become redundant. Also, I have minor quibbles with the ’90s plot tropes that slow down the movie. We actually don’t need all of the explanation that the film gives us.
Thank goodness I watched the director’s cut, which cuts the opening monologue that explains the entire premise. I went to Tubi to watch the intro afterward, and yeah, it gives away everything. Though the film is sci-fi, it has a noir mystery at its core that drives the whole thing forward. Not that it is a particularly complicated mystery, despite what the producers who forced that opening monologue on Alex Proyas seemed to think. Still, I can understand lower reviews if you’ve only seen the theatrical cut.
While the film wears its influences on its sleeve, the combination is fascinating. For all its flaws, the final result still has its charms.