"Dark City" -- time manipulation, Matrix-glitches, water phobias

[alchemy]

I will try & add more to this recommendation/review when time allows, but I had an opportunity to re-watch this film this past week and was reminded of just how good it is. If you haven't had a chance to see this yet, it is really well done.

The basic premise is that most of the humans in Dark City are asleep. The world is forever enshrouded in darkness, until One person is finally woken up to the reality of the situation. It takes someone else to wake you up in Dark City, you can't do it by yourself ... sound familiar?

The city is also not really a city, but is rather an experiment involving humanity. Sound familiar?

The Strangers act as hyperdimensional beings in the background of Dark City, forever tinkering with their experiments on humans, manipulating timelines, changing & distorting reality, etc. They are ever-present, but always out of sight.

The Strangers are also phobic of water. Why is never explained; they just are. So now we have: Wizard of Oz, Signs, Dark City, and a couple of others where the antagonists cannot tolerate H20 (or H30, H202, etc.). Interesting ...

There are also numerous uses of spirals throughout the film, as can be seen cut into the rocks of Northumberland and Scotland (and to a lesser degree, in Ireland). It is claimed in one of the commentary audio tracks to the film that these are fibonacci spirals, but I believe this is erroneous.

Highly recommended, due to the combination of quality film making and the themes above. Apologies for the brevity of the review.

 

[Beau]

"Dark City" -- time manipulation, Matrix-glitches, water phobias

I'll second this one. I recently watched this and it was eery. And as far as the water thing goes, off the top of my head isn't water an allegory to knowledge in esoteric literature? Ya know, use knowledge to defeat the Strangers, or the Wicked Witch, or the lizzies. I'm not 100% sure but I think that's what is meant by it. For what it's worth.

 

[Jsf]

"Dark City" -- time manipulation, Matrix-glitches, water phobias

Very good movie, I recommend it too.

 

[Iconoclast]

"Dark City" -- time manipulation, Matrix-glitches, water phobias

yes, fantastic movie - highly recommended!

and kiefer sutherland demonstrates that he can do more than bleed and hold a gun to a terrorist's head. ;)

 

[Niall]

"Dark City" -- time manipulation, Matrix-glitches, water phobias

Even the way the Strangers are portrayed suggests how one might perceive a council of 4D STS, with their maintenance of a strict yet fluid hierarchy, all huddled together and chanting in unison... eerie, but metaphorically evocative.

Not your ordinary sci-fi movie, it's artistically rich. When the Strangers 'freeze time' and interfere with 'the world below', the movie's creators actually had them move through the city rearranging whole parts of the set* around the sleeping people!

[*set, as in studio set, or setting]

 

[wodasi]

"Dark City" -- time manipulation, Matrix-glitches, water phobias

I ran out and bought it... yes very good, it will take a a few more views to get all the little things
they were bringing out, I especially liked the part where the main character was trying to tell
the detective whats going on and he replies I don't wanna know.
T H A N K S Alchemy . . I watch very few movies . . .

 

[PopHistorian]

"Dark City" -- time manipulation, Matrix-glitches, water phobias

I watched it recently, too, along with a bunch of other "revelatory" or otherwise interesting films in the past six months, most recommended by folks here: Network, They Live, Jesus Camp, Berkeley in the Sixties, Why We Fight, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, Who Killed the Electric Car, The Manchurian Candidate, The Island, Equilibrium, V: The Original Miniseries, V for Vendetta, An Inconvenient Truth, and the entire Left Behind series. Oh, and a whole stack of Noam Chomsky films.

 

[monkee]

"Dark City" -- time manipulation, Matrix-glitches, water phobias

I like Left Behind movies. It is so bad that it's good ;)

 

[PopHistorian]

"Dark City" -- time manipulation, Matrix-glitches, water phobias

Yeah, fascinating because it takes one interpretation of "end times" and turns it into a motion picture that impresses it into the minds of millions of evangelicals, putting them all on the same page. An awesome feat of programming. Interesting, too, just to know what they are all expecting to happen.

 

[Rich]

"Dark City" -- time manipulation, Matrix-glitches, water phobias

Watched this film a few days ago and although a little dated, it had some fantastic allegory's to hyperdimensional reality.

off the top of my head isn't water an allegory to knowledge in esoteric literature?

in the publishers foreword to Gnosis III it says:

books once built as 'bridges' by servants of higher powers to help people cross again from one river of Christianity to the other, to the living river: the mystical Christianity which Christ called the living water- but man's thinking had in the meantime changed so much that few people at that time could understand such texts. Yet even one or two decades ago the information that would make this ancient reservoir of living water accessible was available to the English- speaking world only in abstruse translations of certain texts, most of which had been translated and resented only as curiosities, translated according to modern rules of exegesis not intended to reveal the practical meaning, and so used by those who lack the practical experience or specilist knowledge needed if the practical implications of the text were to be revealed in translation.

 

[Myth of Myself]

Dark City : Directors Cut


I recently watched Dark City the directors cut edition and enjoyed the parallels in the film with the channeled material of the Cassiopaeans. Such as the experimentation upon humans in the film by a dying race of "extraterrestrials" who are somewhat stuck in the paradigm of service to their collective selves.
The way they use the human dead as vehicles I though was a great analogy in reference to OP's as the soulless ones. As I'm sure may on this forum would agree, it is rather common to encounter humans in this time wherein "the lights are on, but there's no human soul in there."

I also enjoyed the "tuning" that was done by the "extraterrestrials" with the cycle of each day wherein the great clock is stopped and all of the humans go to sleep so things could be adjusted so as to manipulate and dissect the human species. That aspect of the film reminds me of the common side effect of the abduction phenomenon where there is missing time along with the examination table that the lead character is put on towards the end.

I had seen the film before some years ago and on a whim I checked it out from the local metaphysical library and really enjoyed watching it in light of the information I have been processing from the Cassiopaeans. I think it was well done and in many ways wasn't enjoyed by the majority of the population due to the subliminal truths that it provokes, which lead to a rejection of the ideas presented in the film and thus the film itself.

Yes sir, the conditioning goes deep.............

 

[durabone]

Re:Dark City : Directors Cut

Director's Cut ooooo.... I'm gettin' the Blu Ray!

A couple of points I liked the about the film. The aliens appeared to be manipulating the
city from beneath like Deros/Teros or something. I really liked the crazed cop who thinks
he's waking up but he knows he's still trapped. I know the feeling. And what was it that
the aliens wanted from "John" in the end? Such advanced beings, no love, they sought
survival by investigating what they didn't understand with materialistic and ego trip
stimulus, scratching away at it like children.

John Murdoch: "You were looking in the wrong place..."

Anyone here know the way to get to Shell Beach?

 

[GRiM]

Re: \

The Strangers are also phobic of water. Why is never explained; they just are.

I think of water in this movie as the concept of knowledge, (spoiler) and in the end when they defeat the 'aliens' they start filling the world with 'water'/knowledge.

 

[H-KQGE]

Re: \Dark City

I'm pleased with this movie & watched it only because i saw this thread a few months back. Finally yesterday i watched it. Excellent! I'm going to dissect the film a little because it's worthy of doing so with the metaphors/allegory running through. I'll point to a few strong points.

This film was made or released in 1998 so it came before the matrix but it clearly shares the same idea pool. The lighting might get to some but is necessary as revealed by the ending. I'll also echo the part about utilizing the human dead as a vehicle as it can easily be missed, although there's 2 visual references to this but just not the part of "being dead."
The p-k & telepathy points should be noted as it is key to the experiment which is not only a huge spoiler for the movie but for all who are up to speed about "hyperdimensional temporary work space" which is revealed at the end. That's a reference to the specific shot at the end with the rotation & the light change.


The rearrangements of people's lives... well that is just.. well what does that make you feel? Watch the disgruntled couple & their subsequent "change", my head just kept on shaking from side to side.
And finally the fact that people are supposed to be one thing at one point & be another at a different point (in terms of the beginning in the hotel where everyone is unconscious & the later revelation about adhering to the dictates of some unknown others) is horrible psychologically. The words of the matrix ring clear at the point of revelation later on : (neo) "i have these memories of things in my life, none of them happened. what does that mean?" (trinity) :" that the matrix cannot tell you who you are."
Highly recommended for all especially if you're not a regular movie person.

 

[aaronfransen]

Re: \

One of my favourite movies. Predates The Matrix by a year but had the same story. Amazing how two films with the same story could be presented so drastically differently. Both extremely well done, but you almost couldn't even call them the same genre.