I turned this weekend into a mini mind-game weekend for myself. As I was reading Thomas Elsaesser’s very explanatory article, “The Mind-Game Film”, I noticed how many important puzzling films I had missed to see. So I watched Dark City (1998) and Lost Highway (1997).
I first watched Dark City. I was already curious about this film because in my “Cinema and Space” course that I was taking last year, it was screened, however I was not able to attend the screening. Upon watching it tonight, I understood why it was part of a course that focused on the relation of cinema with architecture and urban condition. I have poor concentration skills, that is, when I’m watching something on my laptop, I have to pause it for a few times even if it’s a very easy sitcom. And – I did not pause this sci-fi/fantasy film at all. It was that strong and interesting for me. Dark City begins as if it is going to deal with the protagonist’s pathological situation -unexplainable amnesia-. The “dark city” is a nameless town which resembles both film-noir sets with its tragically beautiful women, sad men in trenchcoats and 40’s style cars and night clubs and futuristic metropolitans (think of the skyline from Metropolis and the heavy dark weather from Blade Runner). In fact, the city is a pastiche of elements from many decades, so the real time period is uncertain. What’s certain is there is never daylight in this city. The protagonist, who has lost his memory, is accused of being a serial murderer and he’s of course unable to defend himself. But later, it turns out to be a collective problem: the people of the city are put to sleep every night for a few minutes while members of a certain species erase their memories and replace them with new ones. They are experimenting to see whether the essence of the human changes with the deletion and installation of memories, or whether there is an essence. The protagonist, while escaping from these aliens and the police, finds about his powers similar to theirs and fights them to rescue the city.
The source of the “puzzle” in Dark City works on a good/evil trajectory and other binary oppositions, such as dark and light. But it also asks ontological questions via the protagonist: How do we know who we are, how do we know who we are related to, how much reliable are our memories and how much logical is it to depend on them?
Dark City, despite the complex web it weaves at the beginning, fills all the gaps by the end. This is not to say that it’s a bad film – on the contrary, it is very good. But the viewer is left with few questions and doubts… when it’s compared to Lost Highway, one of the greatest epitomes of the genre. It is the story of successful saxaphone player Fred, whose life is tumbled down when he hears through the intercom of his house the sentence “Dick Laurent is dead” (which must have become a cult line). The film’s main “puzzle” is Fred’s metamorphosis into other people which he practices once in the middle, and once again at the end. And then, there are the somehow scary video effects of the 1990s, combined with Lynch’s quirky characters and dialogues which all create the mind-game of the plot. The film even reminds you of cult sci-fi TV series such as X-Films and The Outer Limits both with its effects and its strange suburban/paranormal mood.
Everyone knows about David Lynch nowadays, don’t they? Even people who haven’t seen his films recognize his name. He is famous/notorious for making films “with no sense”. Has Lost Highway no sense? I don’t know, and I think why it was made is more important than how it ends.
I watched Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977) at quite a young age and I don’t remember much of it. Then I watched Blue Velvet (1986), the certain scenes of which don’t really leave my mind! He knows how to make use of shock value, and employs similar characters and motifs. I will not try and analyze Lost Highway, because this is extensively done in many sources. Instead, I’d like to make another point in general about mind-game films.
Modernism, I think, is key in the making and interpretation of mind-game films. By modernism, I don’t mean “the condition of being modern”, but I’m pointing at a certain time period. From the beginning of 20th century until the 1960’s (maybe before or later), it’s the “modern times”. This was an immense period of change in everything from clothing to architecture, from literature to manners. On a very rough, superficial note, modernism can be claimed to be characterized by urbanisation, electricity, growing populations, the developments in technology and communication, world wars (and threats of world wars), even more extensive usage of machinery (after the Industrial Revolution) on the one hand; and alienation, pessimism, nihilism, darkness, lonely people who were stuck between political doctrines, fastly changing ways of life, economic and national crises on the other. The alienation and pessimism were maybe reactions to the first characteristics anyways.
In mind-game films, I find traces of the modernist take. Although we live in “postmodern” times, the dark mood of the modern times is still here. Works such as Lost Highway, Dark City, Fight Club, Donnie Darko, Vanilla Sky, Memento, The Matrix, Being John Malkovich, and every other film that is within the genre, offer symptoms of a world in crisis, be that on a personal or collective level. Fed up with sounds, images, words of all sorts, today’s individual is maybe lonelier than ever and he is always under a threat. Sometimes this threat comes from the outside in the form of the end of the world or evil conformism of middle class life, and at other times, the threat comes from inside the individual, and the protagonist tries to survive in this setting which is our own setting from a different point of view. This is the one thing that all mind-game films have in common. By portraying dreams, delusions, nightmares, lies, peculiar mental conditions, the denial, reversal and deletion of identities, memories and realities, they display the many aspects of a metaphorical parallel universe, which is maybe an evil twin to our world.
I’m aware that this has been a very unorganized note, but I wanted to share my thoughts right after watching the films and I wrote it on one sitting, so forgive the lack of planning and feel free to disagree with me.
Before I conclude, I’d like to recommend a great new example to the mind-game genre. It’s called Franklyn (Gerald McMorrow, 2008). It was screened at this year’s !f Independent Films Festival. It follows four story archs in present day London and fictional, timeless “Meanwhile City”. I have a copy and would be happy to bring it to whoever needs it
And lastly, here is the beautiful David Bowie song “I’m Deranged” which plays at the beginning and ending of Lost Highway. Enjoy!P.S. There is a fun article here on the similarities between Dark City and The Matrix (1999). Apparently, the latter has “borrowed” a lot from the former.
P.P.S. This week’s recommended article “Making Sense of Lost Highway” is not included in the package, but can be found here through Google Books.
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