This is part of a wave of 1998/1999 movies - including The Matrix, Fight Club, American Beauty, and The Truman Show - that are explicitly or implicitly about trying to discover an alternative to the malaise of this Best of All Possible Worlds that the End of History has brought us. They all imagine upper-middle-class American life as hollow and artificial, and their characters attempt with varying success to find or build an alternative world. They don't make these movies anymore. Now they make movies like Ready Player One and Space Jam: A New Legacy that begin in reality and see the characters taking the Blue Pill to enter a fantasyworld. The characters then devote themselves to protecting that fantasyworld. In Space Jam: A New Legacy, the corporation that rules its characters is an unambiguous force for good, while the villain is a character (Don Cheadle's "Al G Rhythm") who would tamper with this natural order. It's like if the Strangers from Dark City were good and needed to be protected.
Dark City is a frustrating mess. Full of borrowed ideas, from film noir to sci-fi, Kafka to Lang, Blade Runner to Brazil, Dark City co-opts aspects originally intriguing and fails to make them its own, let alone present them coherently. It is fractured, tedious, and, worst of all, without a heart. I mildly enjoyed the last act, where a fraction of the directions the film seemed to be going in finally clarified, but with a mind-numbingly wooden protagonist and a final confrontation rendered laughable due to budgetary constraints, it didn't even come close to redeeming the prior 3 hours (technically 80 minutes, but that's how long it felt to me).Besides its ambitiousness never quite congealing into an involving narrative, Dark City is a place that feels faker than it's meant to be. It lacks the immersion that films like Blade Runner and Brazil possess. The lights are too bright and the streets are too clean (do the Strangers have any concept of garbage?). I've said it before but, especially in fantasy, there is a certain magic act that allows suspension of disbelief to occur. Dark City is too slick and polished, and the lack of those imperfections expose the magic as simple sleight of hand (or CGI). Of course, you can argue that, in-universe, it makes perfect sense due to the nature of the City itself and what it really is, and that the artificiality is a brilliant touch by Alex Proyers; I would counter that the showoff-iness of the camerawork and the jarringly peppy score point to an overarching falseness, rather than a purposely narrative one.Now that I've probably angered a majority of the people reading this, I might as well take it a step further: either out of masochism or mercy, I decided to give the theatrical cut [TC, henceforth] a go immediately after watching the director's cut [DC]. While it did nothing to erase the fundamental problems I had, I found it immensely more bearable than the DC. Maybe it was due to the convoluted plot laying fresh on my mind, but I rather think it was thanks to a the changes made (or not made initially, to be precise). Immediately, the TC adds a narration prior to the title sequence that explains the nature of The Strangers; while in the DC, their aims remain mysterious for a majority of film even though their actions drive Murdoch's true plot. By removing the mystery right away, I was able to focus on Murdoch's current plight instead of being distracted trying figure The Strangers' goals out. It might sound odd, but by emphasizing The Strangers first, it's easier to empathize with and concentrate on Murdoch and his tale. By emphasizing Murdoch (in the DC), his blandness takes center stage and he's simply not strong enough to bear all that narrative weight. Another blessing and curse of the TC is its much more frantic editing. Subtleties from the DC are lost and things move a little too quickly and jerkily, but at least there was a constant push towards resolution instead of slowly, maddeningly circling it (like a drain's spiral, no?). In other words, leave the DC for the fans and re-watchers.Dark City is frustrating because it was made in the wrong medium. Dark City is a movie that should have been a graphic novel. The freedom that medium provides is wide enough to let the ambitious and stylistically dependent concept really spread its wings. Unhindered by budgetary constraints, released of Hollywood conventions, Murdoch's tale is ripe for artistic and narrative experimentation that a linear story and planar presentation just can't do justice.*****I understand that Dark City was a personal favorite of Roger Ebert's. I'd like to think that it just goes to show and celebrate the subjective nature of being a film lover - one of the most enjoyable things about Ebert (or even any of us armchair critics) is that, even when I didn't agree about the merits or lack thereof in a movie he reviewed, hearing those differing opinions was almost always a positive, learning experience. Learning about something as personal as cinematic taste borders on intimacy, and even though I'd say 99% of us never met the guy, each review of his is a tiny part of what makes him, him. He let millions peek into his heart and mind on a daily basis, which is a hell of a brave way to live. I believe I heard someone call him the biggest movie fan in the world, and I think that's just fine with me. RIP Mr. Ebert.
