Dark City

I found Dark City a rather memorable film. The movies paranoid, dark mood had me intrigued and on edge for the entire film. Dark City had a completely distinct feeling to me, one that I felt did a great job to accentuate the movie’s themes and characters. Throughout the film, we are left with the notion that something isn’t right in this world. In the beginning, we aren’t told explicitly that there is something sinister happening underneath it all, but we still have the feeling that everything is a touch off kilter. As the movie progresses, we learn with the main protagonist the truth of the dark city; that this land of perpetual night is nothing more than an experiment orchestrated by a dying alien race. We find out that the main form of control the aliens possess over their lab rats is that their memories and therefore identities are swapped out daily; the result is that no one is an individual, ever man and woman in the city is a part of a part of a collective, ever-changing identity. What is interesting about this is that the aliens, in their pursuit to pin down the human soul, have turned humanity into a dumbed down version of themselves; everyone is a part of a collective hive mind, yet they may only access the memories allocated to them from the larger pool.

One aspect of this film I found enjoyable was certain individual’s dawning realization that something is horribly wrong in the city. We see several characters confronted with the notion that what they know to be truths are lies. These moments of confrontation where a character sees that everything they believe is deceit are some of the most gut wrenching aspects of the film. When the protagonist is trying to convince a detective of the nature of the world, he unleashes upon him a single paradigm shattering question “Have you ever seen the sun?”. The detective is forced to acknowledge that in this land of perpetual night, the only memories of sun he has are distant, fake recollections. I found it fascinating, in turn, that the way this film conveyed these fake memories was to show fleeting indistinct flashback, accompanied by a disturbing, alien sound que. We understand that what we are witnessing is a memory flashback, but we sense that something isn’t right with this recollection.