- Without a doubt, Alex Proyas' Dark City is one of the best and most groundbreaking sci-fi films of the 1990s. Perhaps most famous these days as the "Watch this instead of The Matrix" movie that your annoying friend (in many cases, me) won't stop yammering about, the film mixes equal parts detective noir, paranoid amnesia thrillers, Scanners, and elementary philosophy into a combination that is so much more than the sum of its parts. The fact that I'm having trouble deciding whether the excellent writing, the creative set designs, or the stunning visual effects are the most impressive part of this film says a lot in its favor.
- The fundmental question driving Dark City is: "Are people anything more than the sum of their memories?" As the audience gradually discerns, a pale, otherworldly group called "The Strangers" (Richard O'Brien, Ian Richardson, Bruce Spence) examines this question directly by experimenting on the unwitting citizens of an anonymous city. With the assistance of the cowardly human psychologist Dr. Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland), the Strangers knock out the city's entire population every night at midnight in order to adjust their memories and environments. A motel manager might wake up as a newspaper stand operator, or a married couple could go from poor to rich overnight. As the film opens, one such experiment conducted on John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) has obviously gone awry.
- The film's brilliant opening scene has a confused Murdoch erupt out of a purple-hued bath in a seedy motel room. He has no idea who he is, but a phone call warning and the discovery of a dead woman quickly convince him to run. Philip Marlowe had this sort of thing happen to him all the time, but at least Marlowe's memory would gradually return. In contrast, Murdoch can only recall brief glimpses of a brightly-lit beach and confusing images of Anna (Jennifer Connelly), a nightclub singer who may or may not be his wife. When the detail-oriented Inspector Bumstead (William Hurt) arrives on the murder scene, he has trouble understanding what kind of killer would carve patterns into a hooker's body and yet save a goldfish on his way out the door. Nobody understands Murdoch, including Murdoch himself. Maybe the audience knows what is happening, but images of spirals, fishbowls, and mazes suggest otherwise.
- Incidentally, the city itself is one of the great settings in all of sci-fi film history. On the surface, its neon motel signs and automats peek out through the darkness to make it look like something ripped from a 1940's film noir. Underground, it features a bizarre alien meeting hall with imagery imported straight from Metropolis. And during its transformations, buildings bend, expand, and unfold in ways that movies like Inception and Dr. Strange can only try to imitate. While all this is happening, the film's pulse-pounding score and rapid editing are absolutely relentless, with only the occasional slow nightclub number granting the audience a moment's relaxation.
- As Murdoch, the brooding Sewell is an atypically unconfident leading man, which is a great choice for a story about an amnesiac. Connelly and Sutherland are both fine in their supporting roles, but it is really William Hurt who steals the show as a detective so dedicated to his craft that he's willing to investigate a case that may prove he isn't truly a detective. Character actors shine as an uncle (John Bluthal) who can't remember how to get to a famous beach and the one man (Mitchell Butel) who finally figures a way out. In the end, it's difficult to imagine other actors playing these roles, which is consistant with the film's answer to its big philosophical question. Okay, I've said enough good things about this movie. Now please go see it instead of The Matrix.
