Weirdhouse Cinema: Dark City, Part 2

In this two-part Weirdhouse Cinema exploration, Rob and Joe dive into Noirvember with 1998’s “Dark City,” directed by Alex Proyas and starring Rufus Sewell, William Hurt, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, Richard O'Brien, and Ian Richardson.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and
we're back with the second of our two part series
on the nineteen ninety eight sci fi noir film Dark City,
directed by Alex Proyas, starring rufus Sewell, Jennifer Connolly, William
hurt Keefer Sutherland, and Richard O'Brien. As we discussed last time,
we rarely split Weird House Cinema features into two parts,

(00:38):
but we ended up having a lot to say about
Dark City, particularly, I think because of the coincidence that
Rob and I both had this movie pegged as one
of our absolute favorites when we were young adults. I
know I would have put it in my top five
when I was eighteen years old, but it had been
a long time since either of us had revisited it,

(01:00):
so it's interesting to see it again now with older eyes.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Yes, coincidence or did we simply have the same memories
injected in this late one night when the city changes.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
Good question, And of course, as we said last time,
this is a spoiler laden discussion, so if you haven't
seen the movie and would like to see it without
having everything ruined yet, check it out first.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
I also want to add that, in a little bit
of pop culture synchronicity as well, there's an element in
Dark City that is explored in a different way in
the new Vince Gilligan series Pluribus. No spoilers from me,
especially since Joe hasn't watched any of it yet and
there are only two episodes out, but I'm really digging it.

(01:42):
So if you out there, if you have watched Dark
City and you are watching Pluribus, I would like to
hear from you in the future, maybe when we get
into like spoiler safe territory on that show.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
I look forward to watching that one when we've got
a time for a show again.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
All right. Previously on Dark City.

Speaker 3 (02:01):
Right, So, last time we narrated the opening scenes of
the film, which contain a really great plot hook. So
to briefly summarize, our protagonist, who we will come to
find out is named John Murdoch, wakes up naked in
a bathtub in a strange hotel room with total amnesia.
He does not know who he is, where he came from,

(02:22):
or how he got there. However, he quickly pieces together
a number of clues, mostly disturbing clues. He is bleeding
from a small puncture wound on his forehead. There is
a shattered syringe on the floor, and he finds among
what are apparently his things, a postcard for a place
called Shell Beach, which triggers a flash of a memory

(02:45):
from his boyhood, a memory of running out of a
seaside house into the daylight and looking out over the waves,
but he can't recall anything else.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
I love the syringes, by the way, we didn't mention this,
but the design of these syringes that they feel suitably
like an antique from a slightly alternate dimension. Yeah, and
they have a great feel to them.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
They feel like something that would have been used by
doctor John Brinkley or something.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
But anyway, John Murdock discovers there is a mutilated body
of a dead woman lying beyond his hotel bed, So
that's not good, and he's left to wonder if he
is the murderer. He receives a weird, frantic phone call
from a man calling himself doctor Shreeber played by Kiefer Sutherland,

(03:32):
who tells him that there was an experiment which malfunctioned
which caused him to lose his memory, and that there
are people coming for him, so he has to leave
the hotel immediately. So he does, and on the way
out he witnesses something bizarre. It seems everyone in the
lobby of the hotel is unconscious, as if they passed
out right in the middle of whatever they were doing,

(03:54):
and all of the clocks are stuck at midnight. Suddenly,
while he's going through the lobby, the clocks resume ticking,
and the clerk at the front desk wakes up to
give Murdoch a clue. He says the automat called to
say he left his wallet and he can go there
to get it. Meanwhile, we also meet the people named
on the phone call who were coming to look for Murdoch.

(04:15):
These are the Strangers, a group of bizarre, frightening men
with pale, hairless skin, wearing long fur lined black coats
and black hats. This group seems to be led by
Richard O'Brien as a stranger named mister Hand, and we
see these men case the hotel room. They are indeed
eager to find Murdoch, and we also find out in

(04:38):
this scene that they have super normal powers. For example,
they can command people to sleep and the people instantly
fall unconscious. So here we can pick back up with
the plot recap. I'm not going to narrate the whole
film seen by scene in detail like we do with
some movies. That doesn't quite feel right with Dark City.
I think we're going to do that a bit more

(04:59):
toward the the beginning of the plot and then alternate
between some broad summary and dwelling on some moments here
and there. So after this gripping opening, we meet a
new character, Emma Murdoch played by Jennifer Connelly. We first
meet Emma when she's performing a sultry musical number with
her band. Emma works as a lounge singer at a

(05:21):
club in the city, and I love the atmosphere at
this club. It's like filled with shadows and the soft
chatter of patrons. It's illuminated only about the stage lights
and then the back lights behind the bar, and these
soft glowing orbs at the customer's tables.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
This is one of those nightclub scenes in a film
where if you second guess yourself and think about it,
you might ask, is anyone here having a good time.
It's very laid back. I mean, nobody's screaming in horror,
but it's the vibe is very inward facing. I guess
that's common for some scenes, right, I mean, it's kind

(05:59):
of like shoegaze. Two gays is kind of kind of
like referring to it being you're looking at your shoes, right,
that's a whole idea, right.

Speaker 3 (06:05):
Yeah, No, I think this is a This is a
quite elegant, stylish bad Times bar.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
Now, since we recorded the last episode, we were talking
a bit about the way the character of Emma Murdoch
was drawn, and I had some more thoughts about that.
The more I thought about this character, the more she
seemed to me to actually be a recurring type of
character from film noir, one that gets less noticed than

(06:33):
the more famous archetypes like the hard boiled detective or
the scheming fem fatale. She's definitely that she noted a detective.
She's not a fem fatale. I don't know if this
character type has a name in the literature, but you
might call her something like the melancholy angel. This is
a classically female character who is portrayed as beautiful, mysterious,

(06:57):
mostly virtuous, soft spoken, and sad, with an aura of
pity and doom surrounding her. She is, quite often, but
not always in the story trapped in a situation where
she is either in love with or the obsession of,
a dangerous, unstable and unworthy man who may or may

(07:19):
not be the end of her.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
That is a good read. Yeah, this is the sort
of character. This is an archetype that you see in
these various noir films. Yeah, she's a good person that's
been rather beaten up by an unkind world and maybe
a brooding detective is her last chance at escape or
or peace, or you know, some sort of answer to

(07:43):
her problems. That's right.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
You can see a lot of versions of this character
all throughout the history of the genre. There are shades
of this with Kim Novak and Vertigo. It's been a
while since I've seen this one, but the movie in
a Lonely Place. I think there's a character sort of
like this played by Gloria Graham. I think I get
the sense that Emma Murdoch is modeled after this type
of character, and if so, that would sort of fit

(08:06):
with her linkage to John Murdoch in the story who
The viewer is left to wonder at this point in
the plot whether he is or is not a dangerous
man who butchers women for pleasure.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:20):
After Emma finishes her set on stage, she is notified
of a call from a doctor, Shreeber, who claims he
is her husband's doctor. She's never heard of him, but
she goes to visit Shreeber in his laboratory, where he
explains his belief that her husband, John has suffered a
complete mental breakdown. He's lost his memory, he may be delusional,

(08:44):
even violent, and in any event, he is in dire
need of help. Emma admits that she was not aware
of any of this because she hasn't seen her husband
in three weeks. He stormed out. Schreeber begs her that
if her husband gets in touch, she has to make
sure that Shreeber gets to talk to him before anyone else.
We also learn in this scene the cause of their separation.

(09:07):
Emma had an affair for which she obviously feels great remorse,
and John stormed out in a fit of anger when
he learned the truth. Now, there's an interesting thing going
on that is the main drama of this scene. But
there's a second thing happening while he's talking to Emma,
Shreeber is preoccupied with a task of running a white

(09:29):
lab rat through a maze like you might see in
a psychological experiment, a behavior experiment, but it's a weird maze.
Instead of the rat finding its way to an exit
or to a reward, the rat seems to be finding
its way toward the center of the maze, where the
walls of the passageway in the maze gradually twist and

(09:51):
narrow into a spiral shape until the passage is completely closed.
Kind of odd, and it plays it almost clock Emma
like looking down at this spiral mayze being like, what
is this about? But she doesn't comment on it, but
it plays into the visual spiral theme of the film,
like the spiral wounds on the murder victim. And there's

(10:14):
a scene later where Murdoch looks at his fingertips and
sees a spiral fingerprint pattern. And this is not just
like in the way that a lot of you know,
fingerprints will have whirls that might look a little bit spirally.
It's like a straight up, you know, symmetrical spiral. And
in fact, there's even a scene later where the police
are looking at the prints taken from the murder scene,

(10:36):
and the fingerprints are just spirals, and they're like, what
is this some kind of joke?

Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yeah? Yeah, And then then of course there are other
ways that they them the mice in a maze. Well,
we'll take on additional way later on in the film
with some of the revelations.

Speaker 3 (10:51):
We get, Yeah, that I was going to ask that question,
does this mean something specific the rat in the spiral maze?
I guess thinking about the literal re of the experiment,
it would be that the rat cannot see where it's going.
The rat thinks it is navigating around corners and down
passageways in order to reach a goal of some kind,

(11:11):
but all the passageways ultimately lead to a narrowing aperture
that goes nowhere. So there is a suggestion of struggling
towards something that doesn't actually exist, or labor within an
incomprehensible system that has no actual payoffs, just a big
joke leading to nothing. After this scene, we briefly follow

(11:32):
John Murdock as he walks alone through the empty streets
at night, trying to recall his own first name, and
there's a nice moment where He practices different names in
front of his reflection in a dress shop window to
see what feels right, but nothing really lands. Next we
meet another main character. This is the introduction of Inspector
Frank Bumstead, played by William Hurt. This is the character

(11:55):
that I've read was originally going to be the main
character of the story in our earlier drafts or earlier
ideas of how the story would go before it shifted
to being about John Murdoch. But I would kind of
like to see that version of the film. What would
the same story be like, but told entirely from Bumstead's perspective?

Speaker 2 (12:15):
Yeah, yeah, Like, what's the rest of Bumstead's world? Because
you know, we don't know him as a protagonist, we
know him as a as a major supporting character. So
but then, can we get into one of the problems
we faced with any of these characters, how much do
we really know about them? How much of what we
think we know about them is even real? Is? It

(12:36):
is a tricky film to ask those questions about.

Speaker 3 (12:38):
That's right. So Bumstead is another interesting variation on a
film nor archetype. I'd say he's about seventy five percent
hard boiled detective he does have the tropes of he's
seen it all, he never gets excited, somewhat cynical, nothing
shocks him. In personal affect, he is ironic, terse, clever,

(13:01):
and attentive to details. But also, I mentioned this last time,
he doesn't quite have that hard, self interested or amoral
edge we see in a lot of Noar detectives. Ultimately,
Bumstead I think comes off as a pretty reasonable and
even selfless guy.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
Yeah. Would you say if he's not hard boiled, if
he's like seventy five percent hard boiled, would you say
he's a jammy egg.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
He's a saft boiled Yeah, goes in your ramen. Okay, yeah,
that's nice. Oh maybe maybe soy marinated.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:32):
So when we first meet him, he's about to receive
a call to come check out the crime scene at
the hotel, but before his phone rings, he is sitting
alone in his apartment playing the accordion in the dark,
and we pan over his things and see a framed
photograph of a woman that looks like an old timey photograph,
So we assume that maybe this photo is of his mother,

(13:54):
But he's just yeah, alone in his apartment in the dark,
playing music. On the accordion, and it's a what style
of music is it? It sounds kind of French somehow.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
Yeah, yeah, it definitely has a kind of French sound. No,
not that I really know what I'm talking about with
the chordian music, but yeah, it does have that vibe
to it. Later we learned that this I want to say,
rather large accordion. He travels with it like all the time.
It's in the back of his vac car vack seat
of his car while he's out on the job, which

(14:25):
was interesting and maybe doesn't doesn't invite close scrutiny, but
I don't know. I like a weird detail like that.

Speaker 3 (14:33):
Yeah, And it is a strange detail that he plays
the accordion at all. It's a little more artsy fartsy
than your average movie detective.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
Now are we in full spoil spoiler mode at this point?
Oh yeah, we have been.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
Yeah, okay, I just want to spoiler totally.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah. So, I mean that could be that the memories
that have been injected into him, maybe they injected a
little accordion player and they're just seeing how it fits. Yeah,
or true? Is there like is he accordion player to
the core and they inject like he's actually an accordion
player in his heart of hearts, and they just keep
injecting soft boiled detective into him to see how it fits.

(15:08):
Or they're injecting hard boiled and the accordion in his
already accordion player in his soul is softening him up
a bit.

Speaker 3 (15:15):
This is a really good question because there are other
clues in the movie that sometimes characters muscle memory may
not come along the way it's supposed to do with
their cognitive memories, So like somebody has given an identity
as a married person, but actually we get a scene
later where Bumstead comments to Emma. He says, I noticed

(15:37):
you seem uncomfortable with your wedding ring. How long have
you been married? She says four years, And he says,
you seem as if you're unaccustomed to wearing it, and
she says, I never take it off. So that is
she's not lying, She's we assume she's being true to
her memory, but she may actually be uncomfortable with a
ring because maybe two days before her body was not

(15:58):
wearing one, even though she has a memory of having
always worn one.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
Yeah, it's one of the things too that makes it
interesting to think about this, the plot detail about Emma
having had an affair, because without.

Speaker 3 (16:11):
You didn't do that as far as we can.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
Yeah. Yeah, And that's because if you don't know the
twist yet and you're taking in the story and the character,
it'll feel paper thin, because it's like we have no idea,
like what her side of the story is, why did
she have an affair and so forth. I just it's
not richly supported. And in another film that would be
more of a flaw here, I mean, it would seem

(16:34):
to be part of the experiment, like that's that she
didn't actually have an affair that was implanted in her,
and that's why it doesn't seem to fit her, and
that's why she's still the Melancholi angel or one of
the reasons.

Speaker 3 (16:46):
That's a good point. You can ask a lot of
interesting questions like that about the movie. So what is intended?
But anyway, coming back to the I brought up the
idea of her being uncomfortable physically uncomfortable with her wedding ring,
even though she her cognitive memory is that she has
long been married and always warn the ring. You could
ask that about like physical practice with things, So if

(17:06):
Bumstead is physically practiced at the accordion, like, is that
something that in the movies vision you could implant with
the implanted memories or is that something that would be
muscle memory kind of carried over from another life?

Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah? Yeah, And then yet, to what extent does our
knowledge of memories and the different types of memories and
there's different memory systems in play, how much does that
apply here? Or you know, we're dealing with a rougher
artistic idea of memory and identity.

Speaker 3 (17:36):
Yeah. So after the scene, Bumstead goes to the hotel
and puts together some clues based on the hotel registry.
He identifies Murdoch as a prime suspect and the murders.
We learned that there have been many women killed over
the past three weeks, all with the same mo I
guess the spirals. But Bumstead notices some other things at

(17:56):
the scene, like the fact that after a glass fish
bowl shattered, Murdoch obviously picked up the goldfish and put
it in the bath water so it wouldn't die, And
he asks one of the other cops on the scene,
what kind of killer stops to save a dying goldfish?
In this scene, we also briefly glimpse a character named Woolynsky.

(18:18):
Wallensky was the previous detective investigating this string of murders.
Bumstead just inherited the case, apparently because Wollnsky had recently
lost his mind. Wolensky comes charging down the hall and
on the hotel floor, insisting that they're watching us and
there's no way out. It seems like paranoid rantings, and
he's restrained by other officers. Later, we see Bumstead go

(18:42):
into Wolnsky's office at the station to get his notes
on the case. But Wilensky's office is just a mess
of papers and nonsensical drawings, just madness, and Bumstead says,
I'm being punished for my sins.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
He's using like set mouse traps as bookmarks, yes, or
they're filed away files. Yeah, But anyway.

Speaker 3 (19:03):
At the end of all this, we get the setup
that because Bumstead knows Murdock's identity, he can now look
up Emma to see what she knows. But actually first
she comes to him. She tries to file a missing
person's report about her husband and ends up getting routed
to Bumbstead. They talk and she learns that her husband
is the suspect in a string of six or seven murderers.

(19:24):
She does not seem to believe that he's the killer.
But this is the scene where we get the discussion
about you seem uncomfortable with your ring. Now, after this,
we go on to the Automat scene, which we sort

(19:46):
of built up last time. We got the clue that
John Murdoch left his wallet at the Automat and he's
going to go there to pick it up. As I
said in the previous episode, for some reason, I just
love the Automat. Yeah, nothing all that remarkable happens in
the scene, so I don't want to build it up
like it's a you know, the stunning set piece. It's
just always one of the first things that comes to

(20:07):
mind when I think about this movie. I think about
the Automat and the little things behind the glass.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
Yeah, I'd forgotten about this scene personally, but it was
great to revisit it because I love it. I love
the idea of the Automat. It's just so it's antiquated
and weird, and yet we even though it's not something
with some caveats here that we have in our modern
world anymore, you can understand the appeal. You can understand

(20:33):
the draw towards it, and it also fits nicely in
the time period, in part because of the historic reality
of the thing, but also when you start breaking it apart,
it works rather well in this film and in this timeframe.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
So just in case you don't know what is an automat,
imagine a cross between a restaurant and a vending machine. Basically,
it's like a restaurant or a cafeteria wherein intead of
placing an order through a human and having your food
brought to you or picking up your food, you look
at a bunch of food and drink options stored in

(21:10):
these little cubby holes behind glass doors, and you can
insert coins to open the glass doors and take the
food with you. So it's like the principle of a
vending machine, but operated usually within a brick and mortar,
you know, restaurant space, and you might have a space
to go eat your food.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
It is such a thought provoking concept, Like I legitimately
love it so much because it is in a way
it is a restaurant trying to be a modern vending machine,
like we have vending, Like you can find some very
nice upscale vending machines that say, airports, and you can
find some crappy ones at airports too, obviously, but I've

(21:47):
seen some very upscale ones that have like little fresh
looking things and jars and so forth that you can
get out of out of them. And it's so it's
kind of like a restaurant, brick and mortar restaurant with
a kitchen, creating the illusion of food that is completely automated,
food that has never been touched by human hands, kind

(22:10):
of attempting to give you a feel of a technological
future that has been promised but is not really yet
completely possible and or attainable.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
That's an interesting idea that there's some element of futurism
in the concept of the automat. Sometimes they do have
a bit of futurism in the design, Like obviously not
a lot of automats still exist, but these would be,
you know, some kind of thing that was there in
the nineteen forties or whatever and had this mid century
retro futuristic look.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
Yeah, absolutely, and yeah it's automated. Put your coin in
open a little compartment, get the item that you choose,
and you get to see it through the window before
you get it. I was refreshing about the history a
little bit here, and we're not going to get into
all of it, but the short story is that it's
essentially a late nineteenth century invention. The first one open

(23:05):
in eighteen ninety five. The concept spread through Europe and
then made its way over to America during the first
decade of the twentieth century. In a Dining Experience to
Remember a Brief History of the Automat by Colleen Kim
for Hai, the author points out that during this period,
automats had this kind of unique reputation. It was an
inexpensive way to get your food compared to other options,

(23:28):
but at the same time, it was never seedy. It
was a place where unescorted women could dine, you could
bring children there, and she definitely drives home. Yeah, this
presentation gave diners this feeling of cutting edge modernity. At
the time, despite all these recent technological advancements, most people
did not have a refrigerator at home or various other

(23:51):
modern kitchen innovations, and the automat, in a kind of
deceptive way, gave you the sense that the food had
not been touched by human hands with quote cool mechanical
efficiency in the spirit of the FOD assembly line.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
I want my food to just cut be birthed straight out.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
Of a machine. Yeah, I mean, and as I'll touch
on a second, like, I think we can still totally
get that vibe. At one point there was something like
forty Horn and Hart automats in New York City, and
I think the last one closed in the early nineties,
but subsequently more automats have opened around the world out
of a sense of nostalgia weirdness, you know, let's bust

(24:32):
out some old concepts and see what sticks. During the
COVID pandemic, of course, there was some exploration of similar concepts.
How do we social distance while serving food? And i'm I'm.
This also reminded me a lot of the popularity of
conveyor belt or evolving sushi restaurants. Oh yeah, this is
much the same concept. If you haven't been to one

(24:52):
of these that you can find them just about everywhere
these days, major cities anyway, where you have a kitchen
and instead of there being a wall of little doors
for you to reach in and get your food, you
have a conveyor belt with like sneeze guards, like a
buffet line that comes out and snakes through the restaurant,
comes by your table, and if you see something you like,
you grab it off with the little conveyor belt. And

(25:14):
I think these date back to the nineteen fifties in Japan.
They had a boom in the nineteen seventies and are
still popular today. But I know I love them. I
don't go to one all the time, but they're pretty cool.
They're a lot of fun. And I've also seen conveyor
belt or revolving hot pot restaurants, so you can it's

(25:34):
been applied to other culinary experiences as well.

Speaker 3 (25:39):
Now in this scene, there is nothing nearly as appetizing
as sushi or hot pot behind these little windows. I
was like, what is here? The things we see are
not even full meals. It's like an apple, a bowl
of green jello and carrots.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
The green jello looks good.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
So John Murdoch here in the scene, has a brief
chat with the attendant, which is kind of a funny
circular conversation. The guy's like, hey, you left your wallet here,
and he says, when was I here? And he says,
when you left your wallet. This is the guy stalking
the foods behind the glass. So eventually the attendant puts
Murdoch's wallet in one of the windows, but Murdoch doesn't

(26:22):
have any money to open it with. It seems like
a minor cough gasque kind of situation, so he becomes frustrated,
and somehow, in his anger, this is the first time
we see anything like this, a ray of vibration of
some kind shoots out of his forehead and the glass

(26:42):
door on the window springs open. So what was that, Well,
it seems he's just discovered that he has some kind
of latent telekinetic power.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
Yes, he has finally used his shinning on this side
on this door. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (26:56):
So Murdoch retrieves his wallet and he tries to leave.
Now on the way out, he is briefly stopped and
interrogated by a couple of cops. He obviously has no
idea what to say to them. It's clear at this
point that he is a murder suspect and if they
figure out who he is and put it all together,
this would not be good. But he's rescued from the
situation by a sex worker named May who she kind

(27:20):
of like, you know, banters with the cops and makes
them laugh off the situation and gets him out of
a jam, and afterwards she takes him back to her apartment.
Here they talk briefly while Murdoch goes through his wallet
finding clues about his identity. He learns his first name
is John from his driver's license, and he finds a
photo of Emma. He says to the photo, he kind

(27:43):
of whispers, whoever you are, I hope you're still breathing.
And meanwhile he has a conversation with May about He's like,
do you ever want to do you ever worry doing
what you do? Is it kind of dangerous? But she
doesn't seem worried. Murdoc clearly wonders if he's going to
have some kind of impulse to murder May. He doesn't

(28:03):
know if he's a killer or not, but he doesn't
hurt her. He abruptly leaves her apartment, and in the
director's cut here there's a moment where where Murdoch sees
a young girl and a sectioned off part of the apartment.
I think this is implied to be May's daughter, and
if I recall correctly, this was not part of the
theatrical cut, that.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
Would make sense. I did not really remember the scene
from before for this detail from the scene.

Speaker 3 (28:30):
Rather, I think that kind of increases the ambiguity, because
obviously Murdoch leaves without hurting May and the fact that
he sees the girl and then leaves maybe increases the
ambiguity of whether or not he's a killer, because then
we might think, Oh, I wonder if he would have
killed her if this girl had not been there, ye,

(28:51):
And so it makes it more leaves more mystery, whereas
in the theatrical cut it just seems clearer that he's
not feeling any urge to hurt anybody anyway. After this,
John follows up on a lead from earlier when he
sees a billboard advertising shell Beach. Remember this is the

(29:11):
thing he saw on the postcard from his belongings in
the hotel, the thing he had that sudden flash of
vivid memory about the kind of speeding up fast forward memory,
doo doo, doo doo. And so he sees shell Beach
mentioned on this billboard. It's a billboard with a big
waving mechanical arm. And he goes up the platform to

(29:31):
get up to the billboard. And I remember having this
thought long ago when I saw the movie. I'm like,
what is he thinking to find up there is that.
He goes up there and it'll like have a door
that opens to go to shell Beach.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
It just looks like a great place for an action scene. Yeah,
some railing up there, let's do it.

Speaker 3 (29:47):
I can't deny that. So it is a great place.
He goes up to the platform under the Marquee and
suddenly he is cornered by the strangers. They found him.
So mister Hand played by Richard O'Brien, confronts him about
the murders and says, so it seems you've discovered your
unpleasant nature, and he asks them who are you, and
mister Han says, we might ask you the same question.

(30:10):
Then mister Hand waves a hand and instructs Murdoch to
sleep now in the same manner that we saw him
put the hotel clerk to sleep earlier. But clearly, much
to mister Han's surprise, Murdoch does not sleep. There's no reaction.
Mister Hans seems to have never encountered this before, so
he draws a dagger and he threatens Murdoch with it,

(30:33):
but Murdoch fights back. He begins to fight back with
the telekinesis that we saw earlier at the automat, he
causes the platform to crumble and several of the attacking
strangers fall through, though they can fly, we learn, so
they fall through, but then they hover back up to
the platform, so falling alone doesn't kill them. But when

(30:54):
the strangers but they are threatened. When the strangers see
him using the Telekinesis, a couple of them appear frightened,
and one of them calls out he can tune. This
is the term in the movie for the Telekinesis. They
call it tuning, And ultimately, in this fight, one of
the strangers is killed when the machinery of the mechanical
sign sort of goes haywire and the arm falls down

(31:17):
and chops off the back of the stranger's head, leading
to some kind of leakage, some bizarre blue CGI spider
creature leaking out. Murdoch sees what happens here, he obviously
doesn't comprehend, and then he escapes into the darkness. We
mentioned this in the last episode. Don't want to rag

(31:38):
on the details that don't hold up quite as well,
but man, yeah, the CGI alien brains are not one
of the best looking things here.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
Yeah, I mean they looks better here than in some scenes,
but still, yeah, this is not aged as well.

Speaker 3 (31:54):
So after this we get our first glimpse of the underworld.
So we go from the city above into the city below.
This is the world the underground cavern of the Strangers,
where they are gathered, hundreds of them in congregation and
these oh, I don't know. It's almost like stadium seating in.

Speaker 2 (32:14):
A way, or yeah, like a surgical theater.

Speaker 3 (32:16):
Yes, that's a good comparison. Yeah, I was almost there. Yeah,
like a surgical theater where they're kind of staggered up
and they're all looking down in this middle platform where
people can speak to them. They're sort of having a
debate when we join them, what is to be done
about John Murdoch? They say, this man is dangerous. It
is said he has the power to tune, a power
that only they have. They say, how is it possible

(32:39):
that a man can tune? And then mister Hand enters
the debate to explain. He says, on occasion the imprinting
does not take, they behave erradically. When they awaken, we
find them wandering like lost children. But this one was different. Yes.
They also discuss the fact that one of their number

(32:59):
has been killed by John Murdoch. This is the line
where I forget the actor's name now, but he says,
no more.

Speaker 2 (33:05):
Mister Quick, mister quick dead.

Speaker 3 (33:08):
Let me see that they're all kind of chattering about this,
and they're, oh, poor, poor mister Quick. But we also,
in the scene get to meet the lead I almost
said the lead cinebite. The leads stranger, mister Book, who
is like the elder among them. They were discussing before
he comes on scene, trying to gather more information or

(33:29):
solve the situation with Murdoch, before they update mister Book
about things. But now the big boss is on the
scene and he assigns different strangers parts of the city
to hunt for John Murdoch. He says, we must have
this man. And it seems clear that mister Book is
not just afraid of John Murdoch. He sees opportunity.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
Yes, yes, he he's not just an enemy chosen one
to be dispatched, but he could be central to their
entire operation.

Speaker 3 (33:59):
Now Here, I think we should transition to a more
summary discussion of the general plot threads of the middle
of the movie. There is, of course, we follow Bumstead
as he continues to pursue the case, learning things about
Murdoch and trying to get to John through Emma. At
one point, John does come back to visit Emma. He

(34:20):
goes to her apartment and she recognizes him, but he
does not recognize her. And there's obvious emotional pain in
Emma's on Emma's part in this scene because she feels
remorse about her affair. She wants to understand what's happening.
She feels confusion and sadness about what's happening with John,

(34:42):
but he clearly is just having a deficit of emotion
about her. He's supposed to be our husband, but he
doesn't know who she is and he doesn't understand what's
happening to them.

Speaker 2 (34:53):
Yeah, they're all struggling with the consequences of lives that
are not really their own.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
Bumstead eventually stumbles in on the scene and he tries
to take Murdoch in for questioning, but Murdock escapes with
Emma's help. Emma kind of grabs Bumpstead's gun while Murdoc
jumps down the stairwell, and we see in the scene
Murdoch again using his power of tuning under duress he's
like trying to run away from Bumpstead, and he materializes
a door into existence on a wall so that he

(35:20):
can escape the building. Now there's a big sequence sometime
after this where Murdoch finally gets more perspective on what's
going on. He witnesses what happens seemingly every night at midnight,
though it's always night, of course, every night, however long
a night is in this place, which is that everyone

(35:42):
goes to sleep.

Speaker 2 (35:43):
Sleep.

Speaker 3 (35:44):
Now everyone suddenly goes unconscious as the clock comes to midnight.
And then the strangers emerge from below and they change things.
They change the physical layout of the city, so new
buildings grow out of the ground. Existing buildings change size
and shape, and the strangers do this in an almost

(36:04):
ceremonial synchronized tuning where they all gather under the city
and they kind of chatter their teeth at these machines,
and the machines grow like roots coming up but shoots
from a vegetable coming up out of the ground and
turning and twisting into the buildings. And they're like focusing
all of their psychic energy on this main one machine

(36:26):
that drives the physical changes to the dark city.

Speaker 2 (36:30):
It's interesting. Apparently Proyce was partially inspired in this on
the set of the Crow, watching different set pieces being
moved around. So it's interesting to think about the whole
concept of Dark City as seen through the lens of filmmaking,
you know, like rearranging scenes, changing characters and character relationships.

(36:54):
So yeah, there's probably a strong case to be made
for the unique director slash storey tellers take on exactly
what this what this movie means.

Speaker 3 (37:04):
That's very interesting. I did not know that, but yeah,
as you allude to there, it's not only the physical
layout of the city that changes each night. Some people
in the city have their identities changed, so they get
injections in the forehead that are these syringes prepared by
doctor Schreeber, which give them new memories. So they change

(37:27):
people's identities, change their lives, change their memories, change their relationships,
and then the people wake up never realizing anything has happened.
They just go on with their lives, assuming the lives
that they have been given.

Speaker 2 (37:41):
I really like some of the details here where we
see the strangers working in a kind of assembly line,
like putting together the pot, their their pocket contents, you know,
like a physical paraphernalia. Yeah, yeah, which is important because
it drives home like just the complete nature of the
project that they're involved in here. But it also kind

(38:02):
of lets you know the strangers are doing nothing else,
like this is the only thing they do, like this
is their existence, and it is already raising questions like
why are they doing this? What is this all consuming
project of dark City?

Speaker 3 (38:16):
Well said, and also the other thing being again, it
is always night, never day, and people don't seem to
notice this. Nobody ever comments on the fact that daytime
never happens. Nobody except John. John raises this with other characters.
He at one point when he's arrested by Inspector Bumstead
and he's being questioned, he says, when was the last

(38:37):
time you remember doing something in the day, and Bumstead
is clearly kind of flummoxed here he doesn't know how
to answer.

Speaker 2 (38:45):
Yeah, yeah, or later on we get the do you
remember how to drive to Shell Beach? And which in
a pre GPS, pre ways and Google Maps age. I
think that carried more weight because if you asked me
nowadays like oh, how do you drive to many different places?
Than I would just tell you I have no idea.
I just do what the strangers tell me to do.

Speaker 3 (39:05):
This movie in that sense, in the sense of people
not being aware how strangely perforated and incomplete their memories are,
and not being aware that they don't know how to say,
do certain things or get to certain places that they
really should know, and that that not raising red flags

(39:27):
for them. This connects to something we've talked about on
the show before, a concept I think about all the time.
You remember our episodes on the illusion of explanatory depth.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
Yeah, this is the This is summed up in the
idea of like, hey, draw a bicycle, and we're like, yeah,
I can draw a bicycle.

Speaker 3 (39:41):
Yes, but you can't draw a bicycle. I mean some
people can, Like if people can't, Yeah, if you work
on bicycles or something, you probably can. But like huge
percentage of people think that they know all the parts
of a bicycle and draw can draw one, and they can't.
Most people probably can't draw an accurate working bicycle. And
you think you can, and that the interesting thing is
that you think you can even though you don't actually

(40:04):
have that knowledge. So there is a way that our
brains can generate false sensations of total comprehension. Our lives
are full of things like this, where you have the
sensation that you understand how they work until you are
forced to try to like slow down and list all
the parts of how they work. And only then do

(40:25):
you realize you don't actually understand even though you thought
you did. It's like you were picturing the full process
in your mind, but you didn't realize that picture lacked
crucial detail.

Speaker 2 (40:35):
Yeah. I mean sometimes I think we encountered that putting
together this show, because we watch these movies, you know,
sometimes multiple times, or sometimes it's you know, a film
we've seen many times before, but then when you have
to actually put together notes about it, you're like, oh wait,
I kind of got that out of order in my mind.
I forgot about this scene or this scene, or or
how these pieces came together.

Speaker 3 (40:54):
Yeah, and so I think this is a great The
scene where Bumpstead can't remember how to get to Shell
Beach is a perfect example of the illusion of explanatory depth.
He believes he's fully confident he knows how to get there.
Of course, I know how to get there, until he's
asked to name the steps, and then he can't. He
keeps trying to well. First you go to wait, no,
that can't be right, And so then it's like, is

(41:16):
there even such a place? You know, it feels like
I've been there, but what do you actually remember when
were you there?

Speaker 2 (41:22):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (41:31):
So, through the middle and towards the later part of
the movie we learn more from doctor Schrueber. We get
more full explanation of the situation of the film, and
it is that we are the humans in the movie,
apart from doctor Schrueber. I mean he is in a way,
but all of the other humans in the movie are
prisoners of the Strangers. We don't know who the strangers

(41:55):
are or how they came to have this power over us,
but they are. We are prisoners of the Strangers, and
they are running experiments on us. The Strangers want to
understand human beings, to find out what makes us unique,
and to understand how our minds work. And the explanation
that Schrieber gives for this is that the Strangers have

(42:19):
a collective memory and consciousness, and also that there is
something wrong with them. They know that they are not
long for this world. They're a dying race of creatures.
And without a full explanation of without the dots being
fully connected. Here, there's kind of an illusion of explanatory
depth almost that Shrieber has. They somehow have the idea

(42:42):
that their salvation lies in understanding human individuality, a quality
that they lack but apparently wish to possess. So to
study human individuality, they manipulate variables of human lives and
experiment on humans every night, including constantly erasing memories and

(43:04):
giving us new memories through injection, giving us new identities
to see what we will do. For example, will humans
just play the parts set up for them by the
memories that are implanted, or will they deviate? And this
is what happened to John Murdoch. John Murdoch was just
another one of these people in the city. He was
some guy who was supposed to be given the memory

(43:26):
and identity of a murderer, and the experiment was to
see would he go through with more murders, how would
he behave if given this backstory and identity. But he
woke up during the implantation process and most of the
memories did not take. And that brings us to the
beginning of the film. And yet I think it's interesting

(43:47):
that even after Murdoch sort of finds out about this
backstory that his what memories he was supposed to have
are implanted and not real. He still wants to understand
so happy part of his memory and implanted memory, and
that happy, happy memory is the memory of Shell Beach,
the one thing he vaguely remembers going out into the

(44:09):
sunlight on the sand dunes.

Speaker 2 (44:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (44:12):
We mentioned this in part one, but I think it's
so interesting how the I mean, you could just say that, well,
maybe this is an oversight in the writing, but it
actually feels, I don't know, more thoughtful than that. The
disconnect between the story we're given about the Stranger's lacking
individuality and wanting to study humans so in a way

(44:34):
that they might gain it somehow or at least understand
it and have some power over it, and comparing what
we're told about that to the obvious reality we observe
when we see the Stranger's behavior, which is that they
do possess some kind of individuality. I mean, they have
differentiated personalities, they withhold information from one another, they can

(44:55):
act at cross purposes.

Speaker 2 (44:58):
Yeah, this is fascinating to think about it, and I
hadn't really thought about it in previous viewing. So much.
But yeah, we have at hard here a conflict between
these high minded collective consciousness aliens and humans with their individuality.
And delightfully the film doesn't really beat us over the

(45:19):
head with all the lore and all the particulars on
what's going on. But I tend to think that this
problem that the Strangers are facing is maybe not one
of like physical illness, but one of stagnation. There's something
about them, maybe it's alluded to, like maybe they lost
their home planet or something. Right, They're facing some enormous cataclysm,
and they think that the way out of it is

(45:42):
to differentiate themselves and in a way almost like engage
in a kind of mutation, realizing that as one they
can do amazing things, but they can't break new ground.
And maybe they need to compartmentalize themselves in individual forms
and others in order to do that. And they've tried it,
like they've put themselves in the bodies of the dead,

(46:05):
They've given them themselves these you know, we've talked about
how their names are kind of like the names of
child would make up for a toy, Like they're playing
at individuality, and maybe some of that is working to
a certain extent, but it's still not giving them the
results they're striving for. They realize there's something more to
be gained. They're not achieving true individuality, and it's through

(46:29):
true individuality that they think they'll be able to like
really pull off the next phase. And their species is
evolution or development and so forth.

Speaker 3 (46:39):
Yeah, that's a good read. And so they're stuck somewhere
in the middle of this process of not understanding exactly
what they're still missing.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:47):
Yeah, but speaking of some of them maybe being a
different stages of achieving individuality, this plays right into another
subplot in the middle of the film, which is that
the Strangers come up with a plan to catch Murdoch.
They say, in order to find him, they must think
like him. So one of the strangers, Mister Hand played

(47:10):
by Richard O'Brien, volunteers to get the memories that were
meant for John Murdoch implanted into his brain by doctor Shreeber.
So they like tie him down to this table and
Shreeber injects him in the forehead, says this may sting
a little, and he injects him and then O'Brien wakes

(47:30):
up and he's like, oh, yes, I have John Murdoch
in mind a perfect now. Strangely, they explain that the
purpose of these experiments is to try to understand what
makes us who we are, what makes us individuals. So well,
if you implant false memories in a person, will they
just act in accordance with the story of their lives

(47:51):
established by the memories. John Murdoch does not do that,
though he only had the memories partially implanted, not fully implanted.
So I guess we are left to wonder whether he
would have just gone on to be a murderer if
the implantation had fully worked. We don't know, but he
at least does not go with the script they tried

(48:14):
to give him. Mister Hand fully does like they when
they inject him, Mister Hand seems to become newly sadistic
and interested in cruelty and murder.

Speaker 2 (48:26):
This part of it is kind of like a plot
driven Old Testament biblical challenge. You know, It's like, oh,
job is a is a good and loyal servant, but
what have these things happened to him? Will he will?
He still be true? And it's and the idea here
with the Strangers is like if mister Hand has Murdoch's memories.

(48:47):
He will do the things Murdoch would do, and he
will catch up with him, and then we will have him.
And then there's also, of course an element here of
mister Hand, like all the Strangers, pines after the mystery
of individuality, and this is like more attempt to do it.
Though it has been mentioned that in the past these
sorts of things have not voted well for the Strangers.

(49:08):
It tends to be lethal.

Speaker 3 (49:09):
Yes, do you get the sense that mister Hand I
got this feeling that mister Hand in a way that
his plan to catch Murdoch by getting this injection is pretextual, Yes,
And what he really wants is for his own personal
enjoyment or discovery, the feeling of having these memories injected,

(49:31):
like that's why he wants.

Speaker 2 (49:33):
It, and to be like outside of the collective, you know,
not out of hatred for the collective, but but like that,
I mean that is part of their quest is to
is to solve this mystery of individuality, to find out
even what it is and then to be it. And
of course it gives it just gives Richard O'Brien more
room to play this super super creepy lizard like character.

(49:55):
It's just all fabulous. Now.

Speaker 3 (49:57):
Eventually in the film, Murdoch gets arrested by Bumstead, but
Murdock and Hoow gets Bumpstead on his side and they
sort of work together and kidnapped doctor Schreeber. And they're
going to force doctor Schreeber to take them to shell
Shell Beach because they become obsessed with the idea that
shell Beach is some kind of clue that will help

(50:18):
them figure out what's going on in the situation. If
they can get there, they can discover the solution to
the puzzle.

Speaker 2 (50:24):
That's right. Yeah, And the good doctor seems to know
the way, but he insists, like, you're not gonna like it.

Speaker 3 (50:29):
Yeah, I don't want to take you there. He tries
to run away, but they force him. I guess we
didn't say this already, but doctor Schreeber seems to be
the one human exempted from this whole experiment because he
was a doctor of some kind before all these people
were kidnapped by the strangers, and they allowed him to
live and to keep his skills in exchange for you know,

(50:52):
doing the dirty work for them to making these you know,
being a traitor to humankind and creating these false memories
for people.

Speaker 2 (50:59):
Yeah, his own personal memories are erased as part of this,
but he becomes He describes it that they needed an
artist to help pull this off, and he is the
artist they must depended upon. That's right.

Speaker 3 (51:10):
So anyway, they take him to quote Shell Beach, which
involves going through these kind of back alleys and across
a canal in a rowboat. There's a lot more pondering
of like which of their memories are real, if anything,
you know, who are they really? And they finally get
to this room where we think for a second that
we've come out onto the beach because we like see

(51:31):
through a door and we see this sky blue color,
but then realize it's just another poster. It's just another fake,
like a poster advertising Shell Beach. But then Bumstead and
Murdoch begin beating at the wall underneath the poster. It's
a brick wall. They start hitting it with pipes. They
bust through, and we get a crazy revelation. They look

(51:52):
outside and it is the void of outer space beyond
the brick wall.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
Yes, we learned that the city Dark City is some
sort of orbital not even not necessarily orbital. I'm a little.
I don't know if we really get a clear indication
if this is orbiting some sort of celestial body. Later
on we will get a peek at some sort of
a sun. But is it bound to that sun or

(52:19):
is the Sun bound to this like large piece of technology.
We're not I don't think completely sure, but yeah, not
on Earth. We are in space somewhere, and Earth may
just be a distant concept at this point.

Speaker 3 (52:32):
The city is a space station, and the city part
of it is always facing away from the star. The
star or the sun is always beneath it, which is
why it's always night.

Speaker 2 (52:43):
Yeah, and so it either has a star shackled to it,
or it shackled to a star, I assume for energy
harvesting purposes.

Speaker 3 (52:50):
I think for Bumstead, this is almost a kind of
lovecrafty end discovery. This really just shakes him to his core.
But after this revelation we get a conferenceation. The strangers
arrive on scene with Emma held captive. They've got Emma
with her and so they're trying to get John Murdoch
to surrender that There's also a fight that breaks out

(53:10):
that leads to the death of Inspector Bumstead, where he's
fighting one of the strangers and they get knocked out
into space beyond, and so Bombstead does in the end,
as he floats into space, he gets to see the
whole city and understand things, but then dies, of course,
out in the void.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
Yeah, it reminds me of the scene where Clinton and
Bob Dole are ejected from the space ship in the
House of Heart.

Speaker 3 (53:31):
Yeah, what is this some kind of tube? Yeah, but
so that. Yeah, the strangers arrive with Emma, and I
always liked this detail in the scene. They're bargaining with Murdoch.
They want to get him to surrender, and you know,
they're putting a knife to Emma's neck and Murdoch says,
I don't even know her, don't I don't care what

(53:52):
She's nothing to me. I've never met her before. I
don't know her at all, so why should I care?
And mister Hand says, you do care, don't you? And
he does, And so for some even though he knows
he doesn't she's not really his wife, he can't shake
the feeling that she's his wife, and thus he can't

(54:14):
let them hurt her, so he has to surrender.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (54:18):
I always like how that works out. It's just irrational,
but he can't deny it.

Speaker 2 (54:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:24):
Yeah, So this is all leading up to the final
confrontation of the film. They now have John Murdoch, the
Strangers have John Murdoch, and the Strangers have determined that
there is something special about him. He actually is what
they were looking for through their experiments. It's not fully
clear what exactly that is, but he's some kind of

(54:45):
step up in human evolution or something. He's he's some advancement,
some differentiation point, and they think that they've hit what
they were looking for, and now this is their chance.
They are going to inject their memories into him.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
Yeah, the collective consciousness of the strangers into this one individual.
And maybe that's part of what their ultimate goal is, right,
the idea that if we can find the right sorts
of individuals, or create the right sorts of individuals, we
can put the collective consciousness into each of them and
then they will become true individuals.

Speaker 3 (55:20):
But there's a switcheroo here. Doctor Schrieber saves the day
by doing some matrix style injected memory training. So he
secretly switches out the syringes and instead of injecting John
Murdoch with all of the with the collective memories of
the Strangers, he injects him essentially with a life history

(55:44):
that includes a fully scripted out training module for using
his telekinetic tuning powers.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
Yes, every memory in his head has Strieber in it,
instructing him how to be the Chosen One and how
to battle the strangerssumably, even like, you know, he has
a false memory of his first kiss, but at Schrieber
and saying this is how you will use your mind
to come back the Strangers. It's great.

Speaker 3 (56:10):
But no, he's all, like, you know, the helpful adult
characters from nineteen fifties shows, it's leave it to Beaver.
He's like, you're doing great, my boy, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:18):
I did like those. Those are some nice moments.

Speaker 3 (56:22):
Where key for Sutherland is not doing the doctor Schruber
voice in the yeah yeah. But this kind of leads
up to the big showdown where Murdoch wakes up and
now instead of the Strangers getting what they want, they've
met the perfect enemy, and a psychic telekinetic battle between
John Murdoch and all of the Strangers commences. This turns

(56:44):
into a big flying just like wizard battle basically with
him flinging things at each other this part. I mean,
I guess it is a logical conclusion to the story,
but on revisiting, I was like, I don't know, I
feel like it could have had a better confrontation battle
of some kind of the end.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
I think part of this might be that since Dark
City came out, we've seen this sort of final confrontation
between superpowered individuals just so many times. You know, it
was kind of done to death with Marvel movies, to
the point where a lot of Marvel movies don't really
even do it anymore. Or I don't know, it seems
like maybe the last one or two that I found

(57:22):
at least found a way to subvert it a little bit,
Like I think, I think we just kind of did
it to death, and this maybe felt a little more
fresh at the time. But like you said, it is
the natural progression of the plot, and so I don't
have a I don't really have a suggestion for what
I would rather see. I mean, I don't know. It's
still quite nice in so many ways.

Speaker 3 (57:43):
Yeah, yeah, and certainly what comes after it is. But
so the fight itself sort of turns into a psychic
duel between Murdoch and mister Book where they're blasting power
and I think a dagger back and forth.

Speaker 2 (57:54):
But yeah, we get the flying dagger reversal, which reminds
me a little bit of Dune and also a little
bit of Big Trouble Little China. But I don't know.
It's like, we just did a three part episode on daggers.
So everybody loves a good dagger. Everyone loves a good
flying dagger scene, so I'm not going to criticize that
at all.

Speaker 3 (58:11):
Mister Book gets flung into a giant water tower or
water storage tank, and that really doesn't go great for
him because, as we learned in the last time we
talked about, the strangers don't like water.

Speaker 2 (58:23):
That's right, and so yeah we get the less spectacular
CGI death of the brain Squid.

Speaker 3 (58:38):
Now what happens after this is interesting. The movie doesn't
just stop when Murdoch has won the fight. Murdoch goes
on into a mission of transformation where he let's see
what are all the things he does. He essentially brings
daylight to the city, but he also creates shell Beach.

Speaker 2 (58:58):
That's right. It's kind of like the ending of Lynch's
Doom where the hero achieves great psych powers and then
creates an ocean.

Speaker 3 (59:06):
Yeah, yeah, that's right. So he like unleashes the waters below.
It's like the deluge is brought forth and it creates
an ocean around the dark city and you know, some
sunlight and a beach. And so he's been making and
at this making in the cosmic sense, you know, he's
a creator deity now. But there is a moment where

(59:29):
after all of this happens, kind of in the coda
of the movie, Murdoch has an encounter with mister Hand,
who is still alive and he's sort of being repelled
by the light hiding in the shadows. He's weakened, and
mister Hand says, says to him, I wanted to know
what it was like, how you feel, And Murdoch says,

(59:50):
you know how I was supposed to feel. That person
isn't me, never was. You wanted to know what it
was about us that made us human? Well, you're not
going to find it in here, And he points at
his head. He says, you were looking in the wrong place.

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
The idea being, oh, you should have looked in our
in our hearts and our souls.

Speaker 3 (01:00:10):
Maybe, though he doesn't he doesn't have anywhere to point
to for that, does he Yeah, which I think is good.

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
If he'd pointed to the heart, it might have been
a fit too much. That would be pretty cheesy, yeaheah.
I mean this is a detail that you're looking in
the wrong place. Line. I think. I think I love
this more when I was younger, and maybe found it
a little bit too easy a way out this time around.
I don't know. It probably sounds like I used to

(01:00:36):
be more of a dualist and now I'm more of
a materialist, uh, And therefore I don't Maybe I don't
care for a seemingly dualist message here, but I think
I'm still a dualist or a materialist, depending on mood
and circumstance. So I don't know. I suppose it still
absolutely works the solution here, because I guess the idea
is the strangers have failed in trying to understand human

(01:00:58):
in individuality because they're trying to find a materialist solution,
so one that's based entirely in the brain and in memory,
while the reality of the human soul lies maybe in
some sort of non material reality that they can't even
conceive of and maybe don't possess themselves. But then again,
like you said, we're dealing with enough ambiguity here that

(01:01:21):
it's not like they're spelling all this out. This is
just my read on it, But I think it does
at least tippets hat in the direction of an idea
that humans have a soul and that's maybe something that
the strangers can't understand, and the soul is the true
identity that they can manipulate but cannot replace, and it
certainly cannot create in themselves.

Speaker 3 (01:01:42):
Yeah, I wonder, I don't know. I mean, you could
read that line in that scene as pointing to an
immaterial soul. I don't know if that's how I've always
taken it. I don't really think so. But then again,
I don't know exactly what it is saying. Maybe it's
saying that not that you are missing an immaterial soul

(01:02:03):
as the center of human identity and personality, but that
you're in a way you're asking the question wrong of
you know, what makes human, what makes us human, or
what makes us individual? You are asking that question in
an overly mechanistic way that's trying to trying to understand

(01:02:26):
it in terms of like a single cause such as
a chain of memories when actually the answer to the
question might be something that's so complex. It's an interaction
of so many different variables you couldn't really, you know,
isolate the thing that makes John Murdoch John Murdock. It's
not like these five memories in a row, that's what
does it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
Yeah, I guess you could. You could do a read
on it where what if consciousness is based on some
sort of like quantum scenario and it's beyond anyone's ability,
even the stranger's ability to really glimpse it.

Speaker 3 (01:03:00):
So there's one thing I wanted to mention about the
end of this movie because there's a great scene where
John Murdoch he goes out to the end of a
Peer and at the end of the film, Jennifer Connolly
has already been through another retuning, so she's had her
memories changed, she's been given a new identity. She's someone

(01:03:20):
named Anna now and she does not remember John Murdock.
So when she sees rufus Sewell at the movie at
the end of the movie, it's not like, oh, here's
my husband. He's just a stranger. But he goes out
to meet her at the end of a Peer and
they have a nice little interaction. It's almost kind of
like they get to meet for the first time, but

(01:03:41):
I guess it's only the first time for her anyway.
While she's standing at the end of the pier here
there is a beautiful shot of her standing there against
the railing, and I wanted to flag that Jennifer Connolly
apparently did three movies over five years that all ended
with had very prominent, nearly identical shots of the character

(01:04:05):
standing at the end of a peer looking out over
the ocean. This shot occurs in Dark City in ninety eight,
in Requiem for a Dream in two thousand and in
House of Sand and Fog in two thousand and three.
I knew about the first two when I was a teenager.
I remember my friends and I talking about this that like, weird,
these two movies have almost the exact same shot in

(01:04:26):
them of Jennifer Connolly on the pier. But when I
went to Google this to confirm it before doing the episode,
I found a Reddit post pointing out the third movie,
which I've never seen, House of Sand and Fog. But yeah,
they do indeed include a screenshot and it's the same thing.

Speaker 2 (01:04:41):
Yeah, It's just it seemingly just coincidence, right, I mean,
it's yeah, or you know, you just Jennifer Connelly is
the sort of performer that you just want to put
it in the end of a peer I guess.

Speaker 3 (01:04:51):
So I looked this up to see if I could
find out more like was this intentional in any way?
And I found an addition of Roger Ebert's old movie
answer Man column that he used to do. This was
from December two thousand, where he actually included a reader
question about these two nearly identical shots in Dark City
and Requiem for a Dream, and in response, the column

(01:05:14):
included an answer from Darren Aronofsky, the director of Requiem
for a Dream. Explaining it, he says, quote, the peer
scene comes from a personal moment in my own life.
When I was a teenager, I once met a girl
I had a crush on out at that Coney Island pier.
When I was writing the script before I cast Jennifer Connolly,
I decided to draw on this personal moment. Unfortunately, I

(01:05:37):
had missed Dark City and had no idea there was
a similar image in Alex Proyes's film. When I got
to the pier, Jennifer told me how strange it was
that both films used this image. At that point, it
was too late to change things, so I went for it.
Since the shoot, I've watched Dark City and was amazed
that not only did we use a similar shot, but
used the same actor. I guess I fed off of

(01:05:59):
some ether that Alex created and presented to the universe.
So I owe him thanks, as I owe so many
filmmakers who continue to influence me, consciously and unconsciously. So
he claims it was just a coincidence and maybe it
was yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:06:13):
Or maybe the strangers were involved. You can change the
memories of a filmmaker, but they still have an innate
inner drive to frame a shot with Jennifer Connelly standing
at the end of a peer, and I imagine it
would still be happening if presumably I'm assuming she has
something in our contract now which she's like, no more
peer sings. I guess so. But you know, outside of

(01:06:36):
of whatever, you know, actual ether based connections there are
going on here. I mean, peers are just visually arresting
subject matter. You know, obviously a place of demarcation, but
in the absence of vessels, all kind of bridge to nowhere,
an artificial peninsula jutting out into the void, and you know,
I don't think it contains such a scene. But there's

(01:06:58):
even a classic noir film title The Woman on Peer thirteen.
So I don't know that's neither here nor there, but
it's like it feels fitting in a contemplative picture that
you would have characters standing on a pier looking out
into the distance. You know.

Speaker 3 (01:07:14):
There's one last thing I wanted to talk about about
the end of the film, which is that it's interesting
that when John Murdock triumphs at the end, what he
does with all his power is not reveal the truth
to the people of the Dark City. I mean, maybe
he will in later events, but we don't see that.

(01:07:35):
He does not reveal the truth, but he makes the
illusions real. So, like he says, we've always been told
there's such a place as Shell Beach. I'm gonna make it.
Here's Shell Beach.

Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
Yeah. I would absolutely not swim in these waters though,
because it's just space underneath there. Yeah, like if you
if your form is too perfect on your dive, you're
going to go straight through into outer right. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:08:01):
Yeah, But I thought that was such an interesting conclusion.
Normally you would expect the happy ending of a movie
where people are trapped in in illusory prison like this,
the happy ending is revelation of the truth and liberation.
But instead of that we get we get the manifestation

(01:08:23):
of the image on the cave wall as reality.

Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
Yeah, it's interesting to think about because, Yeah, on one level,
it's like I've exposed the lie, and now I shall
use the lye for our benefit. You know, I will
sustain the I will make the illusion more real and
more pleasant. But yeah, I guess, like we get into
the details of the plot, like we have no there's
no indication that they can ever return home. We don't know.

(01:08:48):
I guess that's how factors into this. We don't know
if they came from Earth. We have no idea where
they are in compared to our own time and certainly
our own space. So it's possible that this is the
absolute best case in a is that they can they
can make a home out of their prison, and maybe
a pleasant one. What is it saying about our own
thoughts and memories? You know, I don't know, Like maybe

(01:09:11):
it's I mean, you could you could apply it to
some ideas of like illusion, false memories and self deception
that like, you know, sometimes it is good. It may
not be reality, but it's what we need to keep
going and to survive.

Speaker 3 (01:09:25):
Yeah, and well, I think the movie also highlights that
there can be different levels of severity of imprisonment.

Speaker 2 (01:09:30):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:09:31):
So on one hand, you can have the physical confinement
to this space station in the form of a city
in the middle of floating in the void. And then
you can have the extra level of imprisonment of your
life not being your own and your identity being you know,
erased and given to you by someone in the middle
of the night. I think maybe the movie is making

(01:09:51):
the case that second form of imprisonment is much worse
than the first, and that given the choice between them,
you would have happily just take being able to live
your own life imprisoned in the city and space, as
opposed to you know, not really having your own identity.

Speaker 2 (01:10:08):
Yeah. Yeah, let's go kind of get into the matrix thing, right,
which reality do you want to live in? The harsh
one where you eat mush or the illusion? Yeah? So
both both films, of course, chewing on some of the
same subject matter, but not all. Yeah. I have one
more question here. I want to throw out. So again
I keep coming back to this idea of the collective

(01:10:29):
consciousness and memories of the strangers, and they're playing at
individuality and experimenting with individuality and trying to claim it
and its benefits for themselves. We of course have individuality,
but we in a way play at the hive mind
as well. We have various social structures and systems, and

(01:10:53):
at a very base level we cooperate. So if cooperating
is what individuals do to achieve some of the ends
and sort of play at communal existence before you know,
inevitably sort of whiplashing back into individuality and the pitfalls
involved there, what is the term for what the strangers

(01:11:16):
are doing? What is the kind of the op not
not really the opposite of cooperation, but what is cooperation
like in reverse from a collective mindset in memory into
something like individuality.

Speaker 3 (01:11:29):
Differentiation something like that. Yeah. Yeah, It's interesting that as
as individual organisms or animals, we certainly do engage in
all kinds of deliberate and non deliberate collective behaviors. And
I think that a lot of the most fulfilling and

(01:11:49):
even rapturous experiences humans go through are when they can
sort of most shed their individuality and kind of like
you know, singing together in a big group, these kind
of moments where you can just like become you feel
this comma muda kind of thing with lots of other people.
That those are like some of the most magical feelings

(01:12:12):
people ever ever experience. I wonder if there's a similar
thing for you know, mister Hand. They're like finally getting
to be his very own murderer self.

Speaker 2 (01:12:20):
Yeah, yeah, anyway, yeah, I love it. Dark City. Great film,
still thought provoking, still engaging today. So it was a
real pleasure to revisit it here. All right, we're gonna
ahead and close it out here. We're gonna go and
shut it down, but we'll let it down forever. Indeed,

(01:12:40):
So we'd of course love to hear from everyone out
there if you have strong memories or strong opinions or
i'm just you know, casual observations about Dark City. We
would love to hear from you, right in. This is
the kind of thing we'd love to get into on
a future episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind listener mail.
In the meantime, we'll also remind you that Stuff to

(01:13:01):
Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and Culture podcast
feed with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on
Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk
about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. If you
are on letterbox dot com, you can find us there.
We are a weird House that is our username, and
you can find a nice list of all the movies
we've covered over the years, and sometimes a peek ahead

(01:13:21):
what comes next. So if you're wondering, I wonder if
they've covered such and such film before, well, that's a
place where you can answer that question.

Speaker 3 (01:13:28):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:13:48):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.