What if we had no idea that the world in which we resided is based on some experiment and that someone reset our memory every midnight? The theme of the movie is that the citizens have no idea what is going on and every relationship and emotion they feel is just a chemical injection injected into them for testing. It could be what is happening to us.
The 1998 sci-fi movie The Dark City by Alex Proya is a product of the neo-noir genre. In the movie, the city has been intentionally kept completely in the dark as part of an ongoing experiment.
The Plot
According to the narration, the Strangers originated from another galaxy and assembled a group of people to study them. Their culture is vanishing. They look for the key to unlocking the human heart, soul, or whatever else lies outside their realm of comprehension. When they want to conduct another experiment, they can fabricate, or “tune,” the enormous artificial city they have built. However, One of these experiments fails as a result of the movie’s main character awakening, ending their experiment. He also acquired the influence of strangers and is now aware of the city’s falsity. The theme of the movie revolves around the protagonist’s authenticity search.
Color Palette
There are two different kinds of spaces: one where the stranger builds the entire city, and the other where the main character builds the city at the very end. Strangers built the city with a cold color palette as its sole foundation. Blacks, browns, shadows, and the drab appearance of the Strangers all play an important role in the film. While the city built by the main character is full of warmer colors, sunlight, and beaches, which take away from the surrounding area’s darkness. In addition, warmer hues are restricted to human faces, neon signs, and the Shell Beach billboard in the world of the Stranger. Warm and cool colors are in stark contrast, and this has been done specifically to support the movie’s concept.
Mood
The suspenseful setting where the false world is created to fabricate societal ideals serves as the foundation for the movie’s mood-setting. The film is a parable in which a free person who can observe what is and challenge it acts as a dangerous weapon against the natural order of things. Because residents’ memories can be altered and they can obey orders from strangers, the threat in the film is even more terrifying. Depending on the memory imprinted by some strangers inside of them, they may be a murderer, a thief, or kind people. Since you do not do the things you do, there is no such thing as “karma.” What if this were to happen to us?
Environment
It was stated in the movie’s opening narration that “First came darkness, then came the Strangers.” The City was never exposed to sunlight. Everyone is simply working in the dark without realizing they are missing the day. Even though there were never any water features in reality, they only have memories of the light and water bodies. Everyone understands what a beach is, but no one knows how to get there because they only have a fictitious memory of having been there previously.
Architecture
The film is regarded as a representative of the neo-noir sci-fi genre. Deep-focus compositions serve as the foundation for the movie’s gloomy urban setting. The city is run by underground machinery systems, where strangers run large clock-like machines that reset people’s minds each midnight. Above-ground walls enclose the city; there is nothing outside of the walls. Interior rooms frequently have long, narrow dimensions. The camera pans to look down a second, equally long street after looking down the first street to its vanishing point in the exteriors. Low-key and ominous lighting is used. The round window in Dark City is a common sight throughout the city and is concave like a fishbowl. The characters don’t live in the highest part of the city; instead, the buildings surrounding their homes dwarf them.
Greek mythology is another source of inspiration for the movie, where gods use humans as pawns to further their ends. Greek mythology may have found its way into the work because the director Proyas enjoyed it and had read some of it, though he didn’t entirely concur with that viewpoint.
The Set Design
Production designer Patrick Tatopoulos developed the world that Dark City is set in. According to him, Both everywhere and nowhere are depicted in the film. It’s a city made of fragments of other cities. Across the street from one place, and over to another. Because of this, one is lost. A portion of the architecture will resemble a street in London, while another portion will resemble New York City. The final portion of the architecture will once more resemble a European city.
Despite being present, one is unsure of the location. It seems like you’ll get lost somewhere every time you go. The production designer planned the city’s design to have a natural presence with structural components. The Strangers have a sizable underground amphitheater as their home, where a human bust conceals a sizable clock and a spiraling machine modifies the city’s above-ground layout. The lair’s set was fifty feet (15 m) tall, as opposed to the thirty-six feet that an average set is (11 m). In Sydney, Australia, a fairground was used to construct the lair set.
Conclusion
The movie looks for humanity’s core in a manufactured setting. The facade created by the inhuman forces eventually falls apart as people begin to doubt their existence. The characters in the film are treated like rats in a made-up maze. The false world in the movie is surrounded by perpetual night, its inhabitants hopeless and lost, and a general gloomy feeling permeates everything and everyone. The combination of vintage furnishings and contemporary conveniences gives the scene a 1950s film noir feel, but the setting is uncertain in time. We see fedoras, automats, vintage and modern automobiles, and cutting-edge technology. The facade resembles the city more, with all of its crime, misery, and confusion, but there are hints of exposed artificiality.
References
Ebert, R., 2005. Discovering human nature. [Online]
Available at: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-dark-city-2005
[Accessed 25 9 2022].
Wikipedia, 2022. Dark City (1998 film). [Online]
Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_City_(1998_film)
[Accessed 25 9 2022].
