Dark City:  Director's Cut

I'll have to begin this review with a disclaimer:  I bloody love Dark City, Director's Cut or no Director's Cut.  It's not a situation like Blade Runner, where the original is nigh-unwatchable compared to the later Director's or Final cuts.

On the contrary.  What Dark City:  The Director's Cut did was make a great movie even BETTER, and frankly when I first saw this movie I didn't think that was possible.

I think this movie is colossally underrated, underestimated, and overlooked.  It had to struggle with opening against Titanic, and in the sci-fi genre it was overshadowed by the visually stunning, but ultimately shallow The Matrix.


However, it has grown in following over the last decade, thanks especially to the attention of Roger Ebert, who in 1998, the year of the film's release, named it the best movie of the year.  In 2008 the studio released director Alex Proyas' original edit of the film.

This next line will be pure irony:  I wish I could blank out my memory of the original cut, and watch the Director's Cut with fresh eyes.

The irony in that statement is found in the plot of Dark City, which centres on one thesis, delivered late in the film:  "Are we more than the mere sum of our memories?"

To expand on that plot is to do it injustice.  The plot of Dark City is a puzzle, meant to be experienced firsthand.  Suffice it say that there is a amnesiac protagonist (Rufus Sewell), who is contacted by an enigmatic doctor (Kiefer Sutherland).  This amnesiac may or may not have committed a series of brutal murders being investigated by an inspector (William Hurt).  This amnesiac may or may not also be involved with a lounge singer (Jennifer Connolly).

The keen eye will notice that I've omitted the names of these characters.  This isn't because they aren't given names.  It's because very quickly, as the plot unravels, we realize just how pointless labels like names are in this world.

For readers who have already seen the theatrical cut of Dark City, I'll try to highlight the changes made in this new version so you can understand where I'm coming from:

1)  expanded dialogue with the antagonists of the movie, to better understand their motivation
2)  more scenes highlighting the meaning of the spiral
3)  more scenes to expand on the character of May (I know, I said no names)
4)  some effects are changed to be more subtle and organic - this includes Jennifer Connelly's original vocals (which were criminally dubbed over) and Hurt's original accordion playing
5)  best of all, the voiceover narration is removed from the first two minutes of the movie

This last point is key.  As I said, I still enjoyed this movie wholeheartedly when I first saw it.  HOWEVER, in the theatrical release, for some reason, someone decided to plug in a voiceover narration (which never occurs again) that gives away THE ENTIRE PLOT OF THE MOVIE.  That this handicap did nothing to diminish my enjoyment of the film speaks volumes about its content, but it was irritating nonetheless.



This is why I wish I could blank out my memory.  I can imagine being riveted by the twists and turns in the plot, the bizarre mystery, the surrealism of the atmosphere, and being completely taken in by the answers our heroes find.

As it was, I was shown this movie in a junior high class by a teacher who I can't thank enough, who realized that middle school kids want to be treated like adults and could handle watching an adult movie.  Let it be said now that the most cynical, argumentative people in the world are middle school students, especially in large groups.  I mentioned in my review of 2001 that in high school, we had people falling asleep.  By the time Dark City was done, not only was everyone quiet, but everyone was ENGAGED.

It might sound like faint praise, but trust me, it's not.

But the real reason that I love this movie so much, the reason I think it deserves the critical attention Ebert and others lavish on it is that not only does it stand up on the first round, it has incredible rewatch value.  That's why, even though I can't eject my memory, I still pounced on the Director's Cut the first chance I got.  I've seen this movie probably fifty times, and I never get tired of it.

The rewatch value can be found in the details of the exploration of memory.  There's not a wasted shot here, not a throwaway line of dialogue.  When the final reveal of Dark City is brought into daylight, it changes our perceptions of everything that's happened before.  That's compelling stuff.

We look at the setting anew.  We look at the plot anew.  Most importantly, we look the characters anew.  Does Connelly's lounge singer perform well because she believes herself to have experience?  Does she remember taking lessons?  What about Hurt's inspector?  Does he possess an investigative mind because he was born that way, or because he remembers being brought up for that purpose?

Even side characters are subjected to this scrutiny.  The hotel manager seems to possess a catchphrase all his own.  This is, it seems, "his line".  Uncle Karl can't walk...or maybe he only needs to believe he can't.  Most hauntingly, does the prostitute, May, care for the little girl in her home because she really IS her daughter...or does she only need to "remember" she is?


Proyas' decision to set this in a quasi-noir detective backdrop is pure genius.  It conjures up the same kind of eerie surrealism of films like Metropolis.  It also generates the investigative spirit of The Lost Room.  Above all else, I think that Proyas recognized that noir and sci-fi are strangely complimentary.  There's a very suspenseful, grim, bent to the noir genre, both stylistically and in content.  Grim murder mysteries work well alongside thought-provoking, dark speculative fiction.  Proyas married the two beautifully here.  In his Great Movies essay on Dark City, Ebert mentions he once played the movie shot-by-shot in Hawaii for a film study, and would frequently pause to simply admire the composition of the work.  I don't think I've ever heard of such a thing before, and I'd be surprised to hear it again, but with Dark City I would have given anything to be in that room.

I could literally go on for pages about this, but I don't want to give away too much, and I don't want to ramble.  That's how Dark City begins; in rambling, confused, incoherence, in the mind of a person who, for all intents and purposes, feels as if he has just been born.  When it ends, there is an exhalation of clarity, and the picture coalesces in a thought-provoking, poignant, conclusion.

All writers undertaking a journey - no, all people, from any walk of life - should aspire to end that journey in this way.