Dark City
The movie Dark City is written
by David Goyer who also wrote such scripts as: The Crow, City of Angels, and
The Substitute. It was directed by Alex Proyas.
Rufus Sewell plays the hero caught up in a confusing and mystifying environment.
Keifer Sutherland plays a technical link connecting the hero to those who have
knowledge and control over what is going on. Jennifer Connelly plays the hero's
wife of whom the hero neither remembers nor knows if he can repose his trust.
William Hurt plays the law enforcement detective who suspects things are not
what they appear to be.
This picture, released in the theaters on February 27, 1998, is more reality
than fiction.
This picture uses many catchy phases for its advertisements. "They built
the city to see what makes us tick. Last night one of us went off." "In
the city, man has no past. Mankind has no future." "You are not who
you think you are." "Tune." "Wake Up." "Memory
Injection." "Escape." etc.
The story is set in a city- a dark city where there is never any sun [light-
truth]. The story opens with our hero lying in a bathtub, waking up from a sleep.
He believes that he has seen something, but cannot remember what. His emergence
from the bathtub is a baptism into which he is reborn from a condition of no
knowledge or awareness of what is happening (mental death) that prevails on
the rest of the inhabitants of the city- with the exception of a doctor, played
by Keifer Sutherland, and a "looney toons" police sergeant.
The story of Dark City is one of searching for the truth of what is happening
within the city. Who is controlling the city. Why is there no light in the city.
What is the doctor so afraid of. Why is our hero being framed for the murder
of six prostitutes. Why doesn't anyone in the city remember their past. Why
does everyone in the city go into suspended animation every night at twelve
o'clock, with the exception of the hero, the doctor, and the mad as a loon police
sergeant.
From the beginning of the movie, we are introduced to the protagonists. They
are an alien race of people who have come from their planet to the earth. They
are a dying race. Why? Because they have for years been using their mental powers
to create an environment that suits their minds, and their civilization is now
dying out. They are looking for a new "host" in which to occupy the
bodies to preserve their own species. They come upon the earth and are experimenting
on mankind to see if their bodies would be suitable hosts.
Do not get me wrong. This is not a picture about gory or scary (like in ugly)
space critters. It is not a comedy like Men in Black. It is instead a serious
mystery and parody of conditions existing on planet earth today. The aliens
[i.e. those who follow not the laws of nature] are here today to see if they
can experiment on mankind to turn mankind into vessels in which that law, which
is not the law of nature or God's law, will be suitable for habitation.
Almost everyone's mind of the inhabitant's within the city has been subdued
by the aliens. Every night at midnight (the hour of the black priests) time
stands still for the inhabitants of the city. They all fall into an inanimate
state at whatever they are doing. They stay in this state for a period of time,
and when they awake, they are no wiser for knowing they have been asleep.
During the time the inhabitants are asleep, the aliens "tune" the
city and the perform "memories injection" to adjust the actions of
the inhabitants. It is a giant experiment to see what works for the aliens in
their quest to take over mankind. The inhabitants have no clue as to what is
going on or who is doing it. The very few people who suspect are looked upon
as lunatics. Those who do understand what is going on can communicate with each
other in a logical manner.
The doctor is the key. He represents knowledge. The "priest". The
"Holy Spirit" so to say. It is the doctor who first notices that the
hero is an exception to the fate of other men who have been programmed to be
turned from the natural law to artificial law of the aliens creation without
their knowledge or consent. It is the doctor, who as a tool of the aliens is
being used himself to program the demise of mankind, formulates a plan to assist
the hero (even without the hero's knowledge) to reverse the process the aliens
have created.
The tool needed to reverse all artificial law is love. The scripture says that
love is the fulfilling of the law. At one point, the hero tells an alien, "If
you have come here thinking that you can defeat us by controlling our mind [i.e.
programming us in your public school system by government instruction], you
are wrong. Mankind cannot be controlled by his mind, but by his heart."
Jennifer Connelly, as our hero's wife, is an inspiration to our hero to seek
remedy from the aliens. With the help of the doctor representing the knowledge
of truth and the willingness to put his own life on the line to place this truth
into the mind of our hero so that truth can prevail] our hero, in the end converts
the dark city into one of light and water. Water is the symbol of life. The
aliens hate both water and light. In the end, the hero and his wife remember
who they are. This is a reference to the fact that the inhabitants of the city
have forgotten their past [i.e. forgotten the law of their Creator].
Today, our "city", the united States of America, has forgotten its
past, its foundational law, its inheritance. There is no property rights, civil
Liberties, reference to Yahweh left in our political municipal laws. Our city
is taken over by aliens who place a foreign law [laws not established under
our foundational documents] upon us. The aliens continually use "mental
injection" to change our thinking into unnatural legal concepts that lead
to slavery and control for their own purposes. It leads to death, civilly, physically,
and spiritually.
In one of the climaxes to the movie, our hero has to break out of the Dark City
by physical force. He literally busts through the skin of the city- the boundaries
of the legal "venue" of the aliens rule to discover where he is.
The movie Dark City is one of many stories coming out of Hollywood today that
tells more truth and contains more reality than fiction. I am not suggesting
that Hollywood is a center of Yahweh's church. But many times, the enemy gives
us more truth than those who might be deemed to be Yahweh's agents and people.
I hope you enjoy this movie as much as I do. Jack Smith gives two thumbs up
to Dark City.