Noir November - Day 4 -Dark City (1998)

Can a science fiction film be film noir? Of course it can, particularly when it is so self-consciously modeled after the genre as Dark City. There is a claustrophobic, nameless city, locked in perpetual night, the distillation of the noir urban jungle. A protagonist - John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) - who may be a serial killer with a serious case of amnesia. His law enforcement nemesis, police detective Bumstead (William Hurt) who is relentlessly pursuing John and the truth. and, mysterious benefactor, Dr. Schreber (Keifer Sutherland), who knows the secret of John's past - and that of everyone in Dark City. Finally, we have the mysterious Strangers, bald, pale and dressed in leather bondage gear and black dusters...oh, and they can fly.

(Spoilers Ahead)

The story is pretty simple. Murdoch is looking for clues to his identity and to his past. As the film unfolds, he finds that he isn't John Murdoch, that John Murdoch has never existed. No one in Dark City is who they think they are. They are being injected with false memories by the Strangers, who are aliens conducting psychological experiments on the inhabitants of Dark City, humans abducted from Earth and brought to a massive space station orbiting a distant star. John has developed immense psychokinetic powers (called tuning) - like those possessed by the Strangers - and he uses them to liberate Dark City. The end.

Our protagonist is tormented by his lack of a past. The partial memories he has - he woke up during the implantation, so it was not completed - were those of a killer, driven to murder women due to his wife, lounger singer Emma (Jennifer Connelly), cheating on him. These fragments initially propel him on his journey of discovery. His obsession with the past - exemplified by memories of a place called Shell Beach - is what drives him. In doing so, he realizes that all memory in Dark City is a lie. The truth does offer enlightenment; but at the price of authentic identity. Bumstead is also obsessed, fist with finding Murdoch when he believes he is a killer, and, eventually with finding out the truth of Dark City. When he does, it is fatal for him. Again, truth becomes is both liberating and destructive. Dr. Schreber, as an agent of both truth (in that he helps John) and lies (because he creates the false memory templates and administers them for the Strangers), is also haunted by the what the aliens did to him. After kidnapping their specimens, they decided to use him as their "memory engineer" since he understood humans and they did not. They forced him to delete all parts of his past not related to his scientific knowledge,leaving him knowing more of the truth than anyone else, but also fully aware of what he lost. And, finally, the main antagonist, Mr. Hand (the very creepy Richard O'Brien) has his own problems with memory and identity. He is injected with the same template as John Murdoch, in the hope that those memories will help the Strangers track him down. Instead, it drives Mr. Hand to commit murder and, eventually, to die, unable to exist as an individual.

The look of Dark City is an exaggeration of the heightened reality of noir. Every image is highly stylized, with most backgrounds lost in darkness, faces obscured by shadows, lights dim and barely illuminating the scenes. Even in brightly lit scenes - for example, an interior at an automat - the light is an unhealthy, sickly green. There are amazing images, including a scene of the Strangers manufacturing documents and artifacts to go along the new identities they create. And the Strangers machinery, in which they harness their "tuning" powers to remake Dark City, is beautiful, a black metal cathedral in Hell.

There are some problems with the film. Some of the CGI - particularly that of the Strangers' true form, a cross between a slug and squid - is very dated. There are plot points that don't make sense. The Strangers motivations, while explained, leave a lot of questions unanswered. For example, they are dying race, a hive mind that shares a single consciousness; it is not clear how learning about human individuality is supposed to save them. Some characters also are one dimensional, the most obvious being police detective Eddie Walenski (Colin Friels), a person who has become aware of the true nature of Dark City. It really isn't explained how he has learned so much and he really just serves as a vehicle for exposition. Also, it isn't clear how the Strangers can have a completely controlled environment, but have a hard time tracking down Murdoch. If they don't know where everyone is at all times, how are they monitoring people?

Problems aside, Dark City is an impressive film. It asks questions about identity and the meaning of truth in an interesting fashion and is full of beautiful noir imagery. Check it out.