Dark City, 1998.
Directed by Alex Proyas.
Starring Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, Richard O’Brien, Ian Richardson, and William Hurt.
SYNOPSIS:
Dark City fans rejoice: Arrow has pulled out all the stops with a definitive 4K Ultra HD edition of this cult classic that serves up a beautifully restored director’s cut, the theatrical version, two new commentary tracks, a new documentary, three new featurettes, and a big pile of extras ported over from previous editions. And you get some physical swag too! Highly recommended.
When will film studios learn to trust filmmakers with unique visions? Probably never, although I imagine that AI will eventually lead to the day when you can create and release your own movie without needing a studio. Or even other humans. I’m not advocating for that, mind you — I’m just looking at where the technology is obviously headed.
In the case of Alex Proyas’ Dark City, which he admits in the introduction to the director’s cut isn’t a perfect movie (how many really are, even among the greatest of all time?), New Line Cinema got cold feet and forgot the “show, don’t tell” lesson of movie storytelling. As a result, they had Proyas graft a clunky bit of voice-over to the front of the film.
Thankfully, Proyas was able to revisit the movie a decade later and produce a director’s cut that eliminates the voice-over and adds more depth to the story. Dark City is a fairly simple tale about a man named John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) who wakes up in a bath tub with no idea who he is and a dead prostitute in the other room, but it’s a Kafka-esque narrative full of twists and turns.
John is married to sultry nightclub singer Emma (Jennifer Connelly), and a man named Dr. Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland) calls him and urges him to leave before men in trenchcoats arrive to grab him. John gets away, but he finds himself navigating a city where it’s also nighttime and everything and everyone changes around him on a regular basis, save those mystery men who are out to get him.
Along the way, he encounters a detective, Frank Bumstead (William Hurt), who is investigating a series of prostitute murders and has honed in on John as a prime suspect, although Frank doubts that John is the right person. He also reconnects with his wife, although he has no idea who she is at first; all he knows is that he has memories of a place called Shell Beach, which may or may not really exist.
That’s about as far as I can go without spoiling anything. Suffice it to say that Dark City is the kind of film that you let wash over you as it pulls you along with currents of various strengths. The overall theme concerns identity, of course, and whether we can truly trust those memories locked away in our brains.
Since its poorly received 1998 theatrical release and much-improved 2008 director’s cut, this film has become a sci-fi cult classic worthy of the kind of love Arrow Video has been lavishing on such movies in recent years.
Thanks to a new 4K restoration, the film looks fabulous, which is no small feat considering the darkness of its color scheme. Deep blacks can pose a challenge for 4K, especially with a movie like this one, but I thought it passed the test with flying colors.
Arrow also included the original theatrical cut on a separate platter. Its image quality isn’t quite on par with the director’s cut; I’m not sure if it was restored too, or if we’re getting the same version previously found on Blu-ray.
In the bonus features department, Arrow also pulled out all the stops with plenty of extras on both discs. The director’s cut includes an introduction with Proyas and film critic Roger Ebert, who remains deeply missed by the movie community.
You also get a quintet of commentary tracks, two of which are new: one features Proyas solo and the other serves up film critics Craig Anderson, Bruce Isaacs, and Herschel Isaacs. Both are, of course, rich in information and insight, and Arrow also ported over 2008 commentaries by Proyas and Ebert (recorded separately) as well as screenwriters Lem Dobbs and David S. Goyer discussing the film together.
The director’s cut disc also includes the new documentary Return to Dark City, which runs nearly an hour and brings back Proyas and members of the cast and crew to talk about the film. We also get a trio of new featurettes: I’m as Much in the Dark as You Are, a visual essay that recommends various adjacent titles, so to speak; Rats in a Maze, another visual essay examing the use of maze imagery in the movie; and a rundown of the design work and storyboards.
Over on the theatrical disc, we get a pair of commentaries dating back to the original DVD release, one with Proyas, Dobbs, Goyer, cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, and production designer Patrick Tatopoulos, and the other with Ebert. They’re interesting time capsules to listen to, since the director’s cut was still a decade away from release and it was obvious that Proyas and his crew were frustrated by what they had to release in theaters. Ebert’s track is more upbeat, which isn’t a surprise since he was a champion of this movie from its earliest days.
The other extras on this disc are archval too, but they’re still worth watching: Memories of Shell Beach, a making-of from the 2008 release that introduced the director’s cut, and The Architecture of Dreams, which digs into the film’s themes and symbolism. The theatrical trailer and an image gallery round out that platter.
Finally, we have some physical extras of the type that Arrow loves to throw into its releases these days. You get three art cards, a Shell Beach postcard, and Dr. Schreber’s business card, along with a 60-page booklet that serves up essays by Richard Kadrey, Sabina Stent, Virat Nehru, and Martyn Pedler.
And that’s it. Whew! Now you have plans for next weekend.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
