Blow Out

Given the implausible frenzy of this film’s opening, we should not be surprised that its conclusion is underpinned by a notion of affection only teenage sensibilities (and perhaps a few disturbed Romantic poets) could concoct. But between these uncomely bookends we are treated to sensational filmmaking, at once highly derivative and highly original, proving again that old adage about achieving maximum originality by following a model. The model is noir, the Man Who Knew Just Enough to get himself embroiled in a maelstrom of deadly currents, or, as it were, deadly current events. And our doomed sailor is an unambitious sound man by the name of Jack Terry (John Travolta). 

Our time is the late 1970s and our place a Philadelphia that some may mistily remember, but one about to celebrate a non-existent holiday, Liberty Day. The insertion of this fictitious fête is significant, because it lends the entire film a certain unreality that abets its game of twisted perceptions. And these perceptions begin and end in the rather terrible little studio that employs Jack Terry. Jack exudes intelligence in a very humble way, ostensibly in line with his self-description as "the guy who always put together radios as a kid, always won science fairs ... you know the type." He is also young, handsome, and almost suspiciously genuine, which means he must inevitably be sheltering a memory of great embarrassment or regret. He will reveal that regret much later in our film, in a passably convincing scene that also explains why he has relegated himself to the orchestration of slag-ridden grindhouse. I say "passably" because considering how much thought was put into making Blow Out, the motive behind Jack's series of unfortunate acts of kindness and interference will strike the viewer as plucked from a rather dusty hat. What acts of kindness, you ask? Well, what would the average citizen do if he saw, on a dark and lonely night on a dark and lonely park bridge, a car skid off the road into a lake? But since Jack Terry has been out all that evening recording nature's music for his sonic arsenal, he will have something more to do once he has fished the requisite damsel in distress (Nancy Allen) out of the drink.

The damsel in question is Sally, and she doesn't fool us one bit, but she certainly deceives poor Jack. Sally is the type of girl men should always avoid, not because she is insincere, manipulative, or incredibly boring – although all these epithets do apply – but because she is frail and suggestible. Like Jack, she has no ambition or plans in life; but unlike the young man who rescues her, her moral weakness allows her to be cast in other people's plots, most notably those of the inscrutable paparazzo Manny Karp (Dennis Franz). Why doesn't Jack see what is so clear to even the most naïve of onlookers? To his credit, we are privy to one piece of information that is only revealed to Jack much later on: he was not the sole witness to the car crash. So as Jack, roused to action, races to the lake to plunge for survivors, we see another figure racing up the stairs behind him. We also see that Sally was not alone in the vehicle (when Jack approaches the sunken car, a bloodied male corpse greets him from the front seat). But when Jack emerges from Sally's hospital room to find a mass of policemen walling off a throng of reporters, he learns that the other occupant of that car was the governor of the state of Pennsylvania, a strong Presidential hopeful who, at last Gallup auscultation, was more than three times as popular as the incumbent to the Oval Office. Alas, on that fateful eve, Jack was too busy organizing his wares ("strangling victims," "footsteps," "cries for help," and one of the most nonsensical horror movie staples, "knife slices") to notice the evening news piece on Governor McRyan's intention to announce his candidacy. Why would McRyan, on a night when he knew he would draw significant media attention, choose to spend that night with a woman who was not his wife? Is this his form of stress relief? What Jack also did not notice on that same news program is the President's spin doctor, who guarantees his man will prevail come November and gives the camera an unmistakable look – and we should stop our insinuations right there.

The film's title refers to the lakebound car's tire (which recalls this infamous occurrence), just as Antonioni's film, a work based on this short story, refers to a photograph; but the more immediate precursor to Blow Out is this masterpiece about another sound man. Thankfully De Palma's vision lacks both Blow-Up's pretentiousness and Harry Caul's overwhelming guilt. Jack Terry is both exactly what he seems to be and, in a very plausible way, a little more than that. The façade he erects and defends against all who approach him noticeably wavers in Sally's presence, a curious matter since she is hardly what one would call a knockout. More likely, the deed of saving a person's life has imbued the savior with more faith in our earthly existence than it has the saved. So when Jack comforts a mistrustful and confused Sally in the hospital, he does so in a manner almost unique to a young Travolta, in the soft, warm, yet still macho way of someone who could truly care for a stranger because that's what good people do. And when he tells Sally that since he saved her life, the least she could do is have a drink with him, the mild emotional extortion has the pungency of truth. Yet the best scenes involve the world Jack creates in his mind, the marriage of sound and sight (it betrays little of our story to mention that a film of the incident surfaces), coated with the memories of that inexplicable accident that could just as easily have left no survivors at all. One wonders whether Jack's aims and energy would have been the same if it had been his state's governor he had saved, not an average, lonely woman doing average, lonely things with quite possibly the next President of the United States. Maybe Jack Terry would even have been given an award for being such an exemplary citizen. An exemplary citizen, mind you, who spends his nights walking around and recording all the secrets of our universe.

The Big Animal

In all likelihood this is the only Polish film that has ever featured this mammal; but it is undoubtedly the only one to feature the adoption of a Bactrian camel by a Polish couple sitting at dinner one late evening. Despite their reputation as beasts of the sand dunes, some species of camels (specifically Bactrian camels, which are native to the Mongolian steppe) can live in colder weather, but are not quite as fond of it – as far as we can ascertain what camels are and are not fond of. Why a camel rather than another exotic animal completely out of place in Northern Europe? Were this camel trotting about, say, Central Park in today's political climate, one might cynically speculate as to the cultural associations that spring to mind (my godfather once quipped that such a tale would surely become a bestseller, especially if it featured a cross-park chase scene). As it were, a Bactrian camel is probably one of the more peaceful, low-maintenance animals you will find. It can eat and drink sporadically, acclimate to almost any type of weather, carry up to half a ton on or between its two humps, and does not need much exercise. When it does eat, it enjoys cud and other delicacies and generally minds its own business, masticating slowly with its double-jointed jaws. Its appearance on endangered species lists stems from its paucity in the wild, as the vast majority have been domesticated and are considered to be good pets. And who's to say that a good pet in China and Mongolia cannot be a good pet in Poland? In a way, a camel in a Polish village makes as much sense as an elephant in a city zoo, a point made during the course of The Big Animal.

It is never quite explained how, one evening, the adoptive parents Zygmunt and Maria Sawicki (Jerzy Stuhr and Anna Dymna) hear a noise in the modest, average garden of their modest average house, and how the source of that noise is none other than a large camel grazing on their lawn. The most logical idea would involve a runaway from a circus, as circuses are the refuge for everything not accepted by mainstream society. The looks they exchange suffice to tell us that the same thought has passed through their minds, but it remains unspoken. Soon thereafter, Zygmunt, who seems like he always really wanted a pet, is parading the unnamed mammal about town on a leash to the mockery and amazement of the locals. Yet what is most interesting is that the motive for such behavior appears to be altruistic: Zygmunt is convinced that his modest, average garden is no place for a beast that large (Bactrian camels are often the size of a bigger horse), and he very responsibly leads it to graze in the countryside. Yet that is not how the public sees it. That same day, he returns to his job as a bank clerk gorged on the wonder of nature's details and spouting platitudes which elicit a swoony response from an attractive young female colleague. Not that, mind you, Zygmunt notices. No, he is far too busy fending off suggestions that this curious addition to the village will net him a pretty penny. "How could I sell it?" he says, horrified at the idea. "I'm just happy it's there." An unusual but sincere sentiment, although no one believes it. 

Zygmunt returns from a long day to find Maria and the camel sharing space tentatively; after all, a modest average property has its limitations. "He just looks at me sometimes," she complains to her husband, "and then he keeps chewing." Zygmunt implies with patience earned through years of marriage that this is exactly what camels do, and neither the chewing nor the staring should be particularly off-putting. "He's so harmless," he adds, stroking him cautiously, and then makes his way to his second job of sorts, clarinet in the local orchestra. Here is where Zygmunt shows signs of distraction and confusion ("I've had a long day," he reiterates, which a joking colleague embellishes by talking about a "safari") obliging the conductor by the end of the film to demote him to second clarinet. Little by little, the couple garners an unfounded reputation for arrogance, snobbery, and isolationist tendencies – although we can't really blame their neighbors who find the whole matter ridiculous. A lucrative one-time advertising opportunity arises that could pay the couple more than Zygmunt would make in a year, provided that he be willing to invest himself with Arab garb and pose with the still unnamed camel (as for names, Zygmunt finds Pampoosh and Fuzzy too emasculating, so Ramses is suggested). After much hemming and hawing, the Sawickis decide the money wouldn't be that much of a bad idea, but the shoot predictably devolves into a debacle and Zygmunt feels bought although he's really only being rented.

One glance at the black-and-white cinematography and you would think it remarkable that this film was made in 1970s Poland (when its events take place), a good ten years before Kieślowski dramatized each of the Ten commandments separately. But the film was actually filmed in 2000, although Kieślowski's script does date from less liberated times. Stuhr, who also directed, has a demeanor about him that reminds you simultaneously of this American actor and this British-born actor of Russian stock, and, accordingly, his presence vacillates from the humorous and boorish to the philosophical and profoundly insightful. There are also a lot of secondary subplots: a lottery drawing with the winner to get a new car, the equivalent of a horse or camel; a claim that Mr. Sawicki has to pay a camel tax – which of course doesn't exist, so he is charged for a small horse; a wonderfully peaceful scene showing the camel's immense size out in the open fields; and a hearing with the Animal Humane society. All of these scenes matter and are integral to making the plot advance. But the one question that Zygmunt never seems to answer is "why do you keep a camel?" And the only response seems to be "why not?" I'm sure Maria could give us a few better reasons.

Barbara

Until telepathy becomes a human trait, we will always retain the freedom to think of whom and what we choose. We can be restricted in where we go, what we read, even to whom we speak; but no oppressive government – and the history of human governance is merely the chronicle of these tyrannies’ demise – has as yet succeeded in fully breaching our inner securities. We have assisted them, however, by doing it ourselves: we have succumbed, and compromised, and relented, all for the sake of the thin hope that the future couldn’t possibly be as grim (as some, unfortunately bereft  of irony, have commented: we have helped lay the bricks to our own prisons). But like in any unholy cult of personality or citizenship, sacrifices for some preposterous common aim are expected, sacrifices which oftentimes assume the shape of our nearest and dearest. And soon we find we have betrayed our most intimate circles solely to elude our own destruction. An appropriate preamble to this fine film.

The year is 1980 and our titular female is Dr. Barbara Wolff (Nina Hoss), late of Berlin’s renowned Charité hospital and now ensconced in a less glamorous, rural setting not far from this city. Our first glimpse of Dr. Wolff is on a lonely bench, smoking as she always seems to be doing (in one scene she studies a serum beneath a microscope while still holding a gasper aloft), her eyes determined not to divulge their inklings. “She’s always like that,” says an unmistakable voice. “If she were six years old, you’d say she was sulky.” The you invoked is Dr. André Reiser (Ronald Zehrfeld) who, while casually spying on his newest physician, is also considering other matters: her intelligence, her vulnerability, and, of course, the fact that, despite her jagged edges, she is gracile and pretty. The unmistakable voice belongs to a beady-eyed man called Schütz (Rainer Bock), and his agenda will resemble the agendas of so many other unmistakable operatives who bide their time waiting, as it were, for others to make mistakes. A wrinkle in his otherwise straitlaced story will surface much later on, one which might explain why so many characters in the credits share his surname. For the nonce, however, his purpose is clear: Barbara Wolff is under surveillance for having sought work in the West, a crime whose punishment will not involve a conventional jail, but the isolation and obscurity of the country doctor. Schütz burdens Reiser with this information and in so doing makes him an accomplice – although in East Germany the number of such abettors was so enormous that Reiser is in no way remarkable. Furnished with this subterfuge from the opening scene, we have few illusions about what Reiser may or may not suspect; but like so many others recruited or press-ganged into intelligence work, he develops a certain sympathy towards his mark. That is why when Barbara glides by a cafeteria table in utter ignoration of her colleagues, he decides to give her a ride home and explain the lay of land. "You shouldn't cordon yourself off that way," he tells her (Sie sollten sich nicht so separieren), as people here are "very sensitive," especially towards someone once employed at the most famous hospital of the most famous divided city in the world. Compared to such a person "they would feel second class" (Sie fühlen sich bald zweite Klasse), to which Barbara inquires whether Reiser's opting for the bourgeois separieren (instead of, say, the proletarianly Teutonic trennen) comprises his own attempt not to sound "second class." That Reiser also finds her house without having asked for directions disabuses Barbara of any last hope that an unmistakable plan is afoot.  

While references to class distinctions and the so-called "second world" are hardly coincidental, mere minutes into Barbara two potential storylines have already been eliminated: the boilerplate melodrama of a shy and successful outsider pigeonholed by locals as a snob, and the cloak-and-dagger oneupmanship of the standard issue spy thriller. Instead, we are obliged to examine closely our two protagonists, who are both caregivers and victims – as well as in each other's way, if you know what I mean. Barbara withdraws to her modest abode complete with untuned piano, a shortcoming not lost on Reiser, who uses his connections to send for a tuner. With that tuner comes a written report that might terrify the average burgher; at least, so we think given the previous scene's confession as to how Reiser, a gifted physician in his own right, came to this hinterland. Barbara listens with like incredulity to this story and Reiser's dilettantish theory about this much-discussed painting; only this Russian tale will finally convince her of her colleague's desires, and at this point it might be all too late. Too late? It gives nothing away to reveal that Barbara is precisely what she appears to be: that is, a flight risk. She has burn-upon-reading notices and other sensitive materials which she hides in her stovepipe, a series of remote drop-off points, and, most importantly perhaps, a lascivious and affluent boyfriend, Jörg (Mark Waschke), who cannot wait to export her into his Western world where she no longer has to play doctor and "can sleep in every day." During a hotel tryst with Jörg, the latter's fellow interloper beds Steffi (Susanne Bormann), a young East German whose cries of lust literally come from the other side of a wall – behind which, of course, lies paradise. As Steffi asks Barbara her tastes in a wedding ring catalogue – Jörg's friend has already made promises of the unkeepable kind – Barbara cannot help but stare at this simple, desperate girl who would love to sleep in every day, provided that day does not rise too far to the East. There are also the ethical diversions supplied by two sick teenagers, Stella (Jasna Fritzi Bauer) and Mario (Jannik Schümann), one of whom is suicidal and likely brain-damaged, the other bent on escaping a work camp that cannot possibly exist anymore in the great civilization called Europe. That bedside Barbara reads to Stella from this book instead of this one should tell us all we need to know about their relationship.

The brilliance of Petzold’s film lies not only in the two protagonists’ mutual misgivings, but in how their intuitions continue to twist their fate. Privy to Dr. Wolff’s plans, as they are slowly unfurled, and to the fact that Reiser knows of her past indiscretions, we still sense that Barbara very slowly comes to trust or at least to understand her colleague. Yet it is Reiser who remains the unknown quantity. Blubbery, fuzzy-featured, and all too keen on impressing a Berliner, his acts of kindness may be more acting than beneficence (at junctures we also wonder whether he knows too much about Stella's personal history). In one scene, as Barbara appears to be asleep, he scrutinizes her Western cigarettes, and we cannot tell whether fear, admiration, or duty to report such contraband brings a smile to his face. Then at the very middle of Barbara, Reiser will deride her West German currency, leading to their first joint bout of laughter: they have become allies, even if the goal of their alliance is not yet clear (at another confederative moment Reiser will switch, likewise without precedent, to the informal du). They pedal their bikes together just like you're supposed to do in a romance and briefly seem far away from their drab reality; he invites her to "the most beautiful place I know," male shorthand for a proposition; and claiming she hates the sea, she retreats to her piano and her effortless talent. But it is another scene, one in which Barbara finds Reiser with a very unexpected patient, that shunts her down a track of fateful decision. And what about that odd gift, a bountiful basket of vegetables, which all tidily resolve into one tasty dish? Perhaps pure chance, even if chance may be minimized in a realm of unmistakable aims. And after all, what is life if not a few too many coincidences?

Body Heat

You may have heard that what passes for flirtation these politically correct days – days in which, as it were, promiscuity is unprecedentedly tolerated – was once considered very good manners. That is because graces in a male-dominated society will naturally revolve around how to handle the fairer sex. Women, those soft and dainty purveyors of carnal gratification and hot meals, should merit the attention of any man in regular need of such services. And so an unspoken contract, one of billions on this earth, is underwritten; in return, a man will keep a woman plied with clothes, a nice home, and the freedom to consecrate her days to either vapid errands or, far more gloriously, absolutely nothing at all. Nothing at all? While we have often euphemized lazy, Philistine lords into "men of leisure" (men of profligate waste is more like it), our cautious contemporaries cannot abide such denomination for a certain ambitious sort of female. Women who, otherwise capable of forging their own paths, possess the monomaniacal aim of easy living and the steely will to obtain it – by means, we should add, of the right man. A hint at the stratagems afoot in this classic film. 

Our plot is so simple we may wonder why its simplicity does not occur to its participants; or perhaps it does and is summarily dismissed as unexciting. As we begin, Ned Racine (William Hurt), a suggestible and very single attorney, is contemplating an inferno against the clear black night. In slow incineration is the Seawater Inn, an establishment where his "family used to eat ... twenty-five years ago," a sentimental sidelight that does nothing to persuade the flavor of the week that Racine could possibly be interested in a less casual arrangement. While we will spend most of Body Heat watching him entangle himself in double-dealings beyond his myopic vista, this first scene, featuring an airport employee called in no small coincidence Angela, reveals Racine's basic dilemma: he has not managed to escape the pastures of his forefathers ("My history's burning up out here"). Perhaps owing to financial restraints, his legal education was also in Florida, a fact he will rue when confronted with a character who not only attended an Ivy League law school, but who also scarcely made use of his degree. Why was Racine – whose name is French for "root" – then articled to a local practice? Because parochialization comprises the fate of most of us, even those supremely talented or supremely well-educated. For all his good looks and sexual energy, Ned Racine is average at most everything else, including his chosen profession, and we will come to suspect he suffers from that kiss of death for lawyers: a distinct inattention to detail. Which may explain why he muffles all whistles and bells that should go off upon immediate sight of the woman known as Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner).     

Matty exudes an insouciant air which to some people smells like money and to others like sex, but which may be more properly termed ruthless ambition ("There are some men, once they get a whiff of you, they'll trail you like a hound"). Racine's pickup routine, one of the more celebrated in recent cinematic history, is never fended off by Matty, who does something a clever woman always does to an admirer: she mocks his strengths and praises his shortcomings. The method behind such an approach is brilliant, as men cannot expect compliments, especially about things they question of themselves. That is why of the four faults imputed to Racine – mental dullness, ugliness, laziness, and insatiable sexual appetite – Matty says that he doesn't look lazy, when a tendency to cut corners, both at work and at play, is precisely his tragic flaw. Whether Racine consciously cares about such a ploy, however, may be of secondary importance since, in her youth, Turner was inarguably one of the world's most voluptuous actresses, endued with a husky confidence rarely seen before or since. But Racine is also attracted to Matty Walker because he senses she, too, is someone new to the world of affluence, a person who succeeded in quitting her forefathers' pastures, if only to become the prize trophy of multimillionaire Edmund Walker (the late Richard Crenna). Many critics have alluded to Matty's odd description of Walker ("he's small and mean ... and weak") as indicative of her own deceptiveness, as Crenna was a tall, athletic man; but Matty is talking about the inner person, not the armored exterior, and in that regard Edmund Walker seems every bit the snake. A local prosecutor will later confirm Walker's unscrupulous business dealings, adding that he was a "bad guy" and that his death was "a positive thing for the world." His death? It gives nothing away to disclose that Racine and Matty embark upon the textbook definition of a 'torrid affair,' abetted in no small part by the unremitting heat. The same heat, another character comments, which makes people kill each other, with the rich, sixtyish husband of a dishy twenty-six-year-old a prime candidate for a very unfortunate accident.

Around this love triangle hover other interested parties: the aforementioned prosecutor (Ted Danson); a righteous police detective (J. A. Preston); an explosives expert (Mickey Rourke); Walker's scowling sister (Lanna Saunders); and a high school classmate of Matty's (Kim Zimmer) whose ego Racine unintentionally strokes. For differing reasons, none of these characters sees any sense in trusting Matty Walker; for other, somewhat related reasons, they think much the same of Ned Racine. Do Racine and Matty deserve one another? We ponder this destiny, and still ballot in Racine's favor: even if he is far from a perfect moral actor, some aspect of him induces pity; somehow we intuit that under different circumstances, Ned Racine would not be so liable to depravity. Yet when Matty relates, somewhat unconvincingly, all the troubles she had to overcome to find her way in life ("Whatever's the evilest thing you can think of me now, I did worse things then"), we remain unpersuaded of her redemption. There is also the unsubtle contrast of sound associated with each character: Matty's precious porch chimes, which we come to understand as a sort of alarm; and Racine's thumping, heavy-breathed runs along the sandy beaches that have always delimited his dreams. So when Matty so alluringly strolls from a concert band shell to the boardwalk, we know Racine will not be able to resist such temptation, and yet already realize that nothing good could come of such indulgence. This is why, in one scene, Ned Racine looks so out of place amidst an elevator full of lawyers: he has nothing of their drive, enthusiasm, or interest in their profession. As he says truthfully at several points, he doesn't even care about the money. All he wants is as great a distance as possible from his life hitherto, the "quick score" the prosecutor claims Racine has always sought, the chance to flee the sunny swamp that has been his entire existence. And all that Matty Walker wants is written beneath her yearbook photo.        

Dark City

I am necessarily skeptical of lavish praise for films that do not maintain a strict artistic agenda, and I am even more dubious about those praised almost exclusively for their visual effect. Most of these effects, you will understand, are just that – effects. Nothing real was filmed; nothing was experienced between actor and director; nothing was improvised, natural, or granted an opportunity to fail. That is the inherent shortcoming of all films which lean heavily on computer-generated imagery, as well as the one very good reason why video games in any way, shape, or form have never appealed to me. Their graphics are extraordinary, although we may admire such advances for but a few awestruck moments until we realize that what we are watching is even less real than a dream. Dreams are so real that we may remember something in our waking hours, something impossible, such as the return of childhood or a lost love, and understand that this is the memory of last night's pandemonium. An excellent way to bring us to this iconic film.

The setup is boilerplate noir: a young man (Rufus Sewell) awakes in a bathtub not knowing his name or his past. Above him a swinging light bulb suggests he may just have missed someone who could have helped to unlock those mysteries. As he rises and instinctively clothes himself (we are all quite bourgeois upon waking), he finds beside him the body of a young woman slain in what can be loosely termed a ritual manner, or at least by someone who was trying to do more than just kill her. Our protagonist lurches on tangled in webs of memories – a woman, affection, bloodletting, some other women, and innumerable flashes of scenes of chiaroscuro. He finds in short order that he cannot explain any of this, but perhaps this task will ultimately devolve to us. And after dressing in the clothes available and leaving the apartment (with doubts about his ownership of both), he then proceeds down that well-worn path of discovering himself even if this involves accepting his murderous psychosis. As he puzzles out meanings in his new realm he is immediately taken by a postcard for a place called Shell Beach. This is one of the many generic toponyms that do not reduce the significance of what is occurring into allegory so much as suggest that the namers do not quite know what is a cliché and what isn't. How could anyone who speaks English as a native language, as all the characters in Dark City seem to do, not comprehend the banality of such nomenclature? Two reasons surface to explain this dissonance: those who named these places are alien to the world that contains them, and this world is a trap.     

In time we and our protagonist become fairly sure that his name is John Murdoch. He traces his life to his wife Emma (a chubby-cheeked Jennifer Connelly), a torch singer whose recent extramarital activity may have incited him to start murdering those for whom promiscuity pays the bills. Murdoch also locates a limping doctor by the name of Daniel Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland) – a namesake of one of the most notorious of all clinical patients – and a tall, handsome, and rather befuddled detective called Bumstead (William Hurt), a name which will remind some of us of an old comic strip. These four characters, representing in no coincidence the heroism, passion, science, and intuition of a tragedy, will interact and intertwine in the usual series of half-misunderstood episodes, and each encounter will add a line to our own transcript of what precisely makes the City tick. We suspect we know the tickers already. They are very probably that menacing, roving trenchcoated band known as the Strangers since they seem to be the only ones with any degree of autonomy, and exhibit a morbid interest in the fate of John Murdoch. Who or what they are does not need to be explained here; suffice it to say that in appearance they resemble an eerie hybrid of this film's species (if that is really the right word) with the wardrobe of this film's murderer. When midnight strikes – as if one could really measure a middle to this perpetual darkness – the Strangers gather in a subterranean vault that will also remind the thoughtful viewer of M.'s cavern of confrontation and set in motion a giant machine that resembles a human face. The result is an altered surface world, in which all the beings that dwell therein are lulled into deepest slumber, at which point the Strangers decide, almost haphazardly by all indications, that the surface-dwellers' existence should change. To this end they enlist the good Dr. Schreber, who happens to be very handy with a vast arsenal of needles and potions.

Most reviews would now proceed to comment on the why and how of the city's machinations, but that would be giving too much away. Are there profound philosophical questions to be pondered? There are indeed; and yet the aim of the plot's structure, which is plain if ingenious in its plainness, allows us to consider only four. What is the nature of memory, that is to say, why do we remember? Are our personalities constructed upon what we remember or what we believe? How can we be sure that what we remembered actually happened to us, or at least whether it happened to us in exactly the way we think we remember (a corollary would be why do we sometimes recall the same event from two or more different points of view)? And finally, what does our interaction in the slowly dissipating "present reality" do to our memories, does it enhance or detract from them? These are certainly fascinating queries that will, in all likelihood, remain for all of history unanswerable. Dark City does not want to answer them; indeed, its reluctance to do so is one of its most redemptive characteristics. Yet it provides us with a scenario in which each is in fact answered intelligently and coherently, without aggregate simplification, a scenario that accounts for the Strangers, for Emma, for Schreber and Bumstead, and even for most of John Murdoch.

Why is Dark City better than similarly styled works about reality and unreality? Because unlike some much-ballyhooed vehicles which are really just pulp with choreographed fighting (one of cinema's most hideous additaments) and desperate lunges at philosophy about as profound as a contact lens, Dark City faithfully orchestrates a nightmare based on a few old German movies from the 1920s and then maybe this perplexing classic. The texture, and here I echo literally dozens of critics, is so palpable and seamless as to seem realer than reality, which is exactly the sensation of our worst nightmares when we are still in their thrall. There are so many wonderful moments – a scene in which water seems to spill into outer space and yet still accumulate, the look that Murdoch gives one particularly devastating lady of the night before making a crucial decision, the first glimpse at Shell Beach as it resonates in Murdoch's memory, one couple's gentrification literally overnight – that we fairly swoon at the craftsmanship. At length one unbelievable shot towards the end of our tale will eclipse all other shots and all other ideas, and when it first appears, it quickly becomes one of the most breathtaking in the history of cinema. You will know what I mean, and you will gasp in aesthetic awe if you haven't already guessed the secret of the eternal night and how it may be conquered.  Quod nulla nux interpolet, fideque jugi luceat.