DARK CITY @ 25

A man wakes in the bath of his digs with a punctured forehead and the corpse of a girl by the bed. Spirals have been carved into her torso. He can't recall his name but, as he's skipping out on his rent, the concierge reminds him his rent's due and he can pick up his wallet at the laundromat. Ah ha, ID. Fast. News of the killer of sex workers is on the front page everywhere he looks. A wonky-eyed doctor with a breathy way of talking tries to catch up with him. Oh, and there's a gang of bloodlessly white tough guys on his tail, as well. They belong to a whole invasion force who gather in a cave and order the city to rearrange itself which it does, as buildings change shape or corkscrew up out of the earth. When they say the city changes after midnight they mean it. So is our guy a killer? He is finding that he has a kind psycho kinesis but doesn't know if he can control it. That wonky doctor is not going to let up and now there's a melancholic detective on his case, as well. Gonna be a long night.

Alex Proyas' Bakelite-punk tale came four years after his heavily enjoyable The Crow and eleven after his post-apocalyptic fantasy Spirits of the Air: Gremlins of the Clouds and, despite the time gaps between them there is a clearly discernible lineage. The gaps can also be credibly filled with the music videos he made in the '80s and '90s. No slouch with the power of hard-edged imagery and some eager learning from German and Soviet early cinema, he dishes up some of the tastiest noir-horror-industrialist sets and machinery that anyone could serve. The extra trick is that he's working with a script that means something and a cast that makes that mean something. And all this movie had to do was stand there and look pretty.

But Dark City has a point and carries it to the end. If you look at it now and it reminds you of the world building of Blade Runner or the grimy darkness of The Element of Crime, you might think it's either too much of its time or way behind it. However, for all the '80s post punk exuberance, the noirishness is settled faithfully and the mix with what might be an alien overlord subplot establish between them a solid setting. Like all that black the post-punks wore, this goes with anything. Jennifer Connelly's nightclub singer covering a Dean Martin standard has a very musique du jour feel by nudging at trip hop. William Hurt's Inspector with his triggering accordion clue us (and him) in to the possibilities of what is really going on with time and memory. And, though I didn't try it, as rich as the colour pallet is (at the darker end of the spectrum but still rich) it probably looks as good in black and white.

As for being late to the speculative fiction shindig, Dark City actually works better as a predecessor to The Matrix, The Thirteenth Floor and so on which would follow straight after. Those fables of the dangers of online life pour directly from this vessel, whatever else their derivations. Dark City is about memory and its power in giving us place and purpose and the possibility that our memory is threatened by culture that for all its apparent chaos moves, like all culture, into homogeneity. You're welcome to your own memories as long as they fit the rest of us. Also, it begins with the same premise as Hal Hartley's failed attempt in Amateur (are you still a bad guy if you can't remember that you're a bad guy) which might have scotched the theme forever. This is a fine repair job.

I should point out here that I chose the director's cut over the theatrical as I hadn't seen it before. While that does compromise the @25 status of this blog entry I can report that this is a director's cut that only goes for about ten minutes over the original length and clarifies and improves pacing by extending some scenes (including the haste of the finale which robbed it of power) and erasing the over-opening narration which undercuts the superb twisty reveal in the middle act.

Young and chiselled Rufus Sewell leads us through the memory maze solidly with a blend of fear and wonderment constantly trading time on his face. Jennifer Connelly, now grown up from her childhood roles, gives us the squeaky voiced gravity that would serve her through a few big-roled years (Requiem for a Dream and The House of Sand and Fog), Kiefer Sutherland's intensity and limit on five syllables per line before a new breath delivers a variable urgency, William Hurt plays his '80s feeling new agey bloke with a little extra noir, and Richard O'Brien happily dresses Riff Raff up in Jack the Ripper black. It's a good cast.

This film is a marker in my own memory. I recall how long it seemed to take to get a release even though it was in the first half of the year. The trailer, with its wall to wall richness was enticing and I was happy if it turned out to be style over substance. That trailer was also the reason for a brief embarrassment at my then new job as I clicked on it and it blasted my computer speakers until I scrambled around for the pause button. I claimed tech-savviness at the time and still tell myself I got away with it. But that figures into it as, with a new full time career job that I liked I felt like I'd got a break that was going smoothly and a good stylish slice of culture would serve as a fine treat. We piled into town and went to whichever one of the two cinema chain venues that wasn't showing it and then ran to the right one, sat back and luxuriated. Afterwards, we couldn't stop talking about it and went to Del Whatsis on Brunswick St and kept yapping. I was into liqueurs at the time and had a few Fra Angelicos. There was something distinct playing on the sound system which we asked about. I bought the Air album the next working day.

It is still their best record and Dark City is still Alex Proyas' best film. Air went on to make a series of success-drunk blandings (though I'll except the Virgin Suicides score which was dreamy). Proyas has gone on to more music videos, other features and makes a living. Straight after Dark City, his fable of fame at the edges Garage Days, might have been saved by its genuinely funny climactic joke if it hadn't been so embarrassingly bad for the rest of it. But we'll always have Paris, or Shell Beach, or whatever we'll always have, and this, even if it does lack a little roundness and plot-knot-tying, is one for the timeline.