***SPOILERS***
You wake up, naked, in a bathtub filled with water. Your forehead is bleeding. A dead woman is sprawled on the floor, spiral shapes slashed into her body. The phone is ringing. And your mind is a complete blank.
This is the situation facing Rufus Sewell at the start of Dark City. He has no idea who he is or where he is. The phone call is to tell him that someone is after him, and as he runs out the door they are arriving on the corridor: scary, skeletal men with blue-white faces, wearing long black coats, black hats, and traditional killers' black leather gloves, who appear to be able to warp reality with their minds. We soon learn that the police are also chasing him, as he is chief suspect in a string of prostitute killings, all of whom had the spirals carved into their bodies. Also looking for him is his wife Emma (Jennifer Connelly), a crooner in a blues bar. And finally, there is Dr Schreber, who seems to have the answers to all his questions but who is working with the scary guys, the Strangers.
To say any more would be to give away the plot, and it is crucial to this film that we know just as little as Rufus (or, as he discovers from his wallet, John Murdoch). There is a voiceover at the start from Dr Schreber: MUTE IT. Do not turn the sound up until you see Rufus in his bathtub. The voiceover ruins the story, putting you in a much more knowledgeable position than Rufus: the film is so much better when you know only what he knows, and you can put the story together in your head as the film progresses instead of having it spoon-fed to you at the beginning. Like the voiceover in Blade Runner, it seems to have been put in for people who cannot follow a plot from beginning to end, and as in Blade Runner, it is ruinous to the film. If you persevere, slowly the threads will come together, and an excellent denoument results.
The acting is varied: Rufus Sewell does a serviceable American accent, and he is very believable as the bewildered, resentful, angry Murdoch. Jennifer Connelly is the traditional crooner siren: as in The Rocketeer, she really looks the part, and she makes Emma's character sympathetic. Kiefer Sutherland is just awful as Dr Schreber - maybe he was told to play the character as a joke mad scientist, but it's a ridiculous performance - cartoon Nazi hairstyle and glasses, a Quasimodo limp, and a bizarre halting delivery. William Hurt, finally, is his usual wooden self as Inspector Bumstead, stilted delivery, closed eyes, and all the other mannerisms he hauls out in movie after movie. It's a shame to see someone who used to be able to act turn into such a caricature of himself.
The strength of this film is the visuals. Dark City is an amazing-looking place. It fuses Anton Furst's brooding, melancholy Gotham City and Edward Hopper's paintings of urban isolation: a world of smudgy browns and greys punctuated by glaring, empty shopfronts and neon signs for sleazy hotels. Pools of dirty water glisten on the pavements; gutters drip; there is no green anywhere, just asphalt and brick. Every corner, every stairwell is clotted with shadows. There is a terrific scene as the film opens - an overhead shot, we are looking down on a bathroom, lit by an overhead light which is swinging madly from side to side. As it swings in and out of shot, we see alternately a shadowy cavern and the tiled bathroom floor, a brilliant, poisonous green. The contrast is striking, and sets the tone for the rest of this superbly noir film: no-one is quite as we perceive them, and nothing is entirely clear-cut.
The effects are terrific, and used as part of the story rather than the story itself, as in so many current films. As the Strangers warp reality, buildings burst through the ground, twist into place, and seem to shake themselves, doglike, as they settle in. There is a wonderful sequence where a poky tenement flat transforms into a spacious, high-domed mansion. And the images in the closing ten minutes or thereabouts are original, strange, and memorable. Great attention is paid to detail, and it's important to keep your eyes open throughout.
Alex Proyas shows the same unique style here as he did in The Crow - a dark, twisted vision of the world, shots at unexpected angles, distorted viewpoints. His directing style is perfectly suited to this story, skewed and strange and shadowy. Overall, Dark City is a terrific film, probably too intelligent and original to succeed at the box office. Unlike its glittering derivative cousin, The Matrix, it didn't dump a story resolution for the sniff of a sequel, and there is very little action - this is a cerebral story. This is not to slur The Matrix, one of my favourite films of the year, but which I loved in a quite different way. Dark City is not an action film with interesting ideas behind it - it *is* an idea. The Matrix is caviare: Dark City is a plum pudding - dense and rich and very, very satisfying.
(c) Jennifer Mellerick 1999