Post by abraxas on Dec 13, 2009 12:44:23 GMT -5
I know there are some people here who don't like interpretive reviews of films but I figured I'd add this special review for anyone who might have an interested in some of the underlining ideas and concepts found in Alex Proyas' (The Crow) film, keep in mind that these are my own personal reflections. This review does not reflect the directors or writers intent, it is merely an examination of the various plot points and concepts as they relate to Gnostic philosophy and th Gnostic world view.
There is still room for anyone who may want to write a more traditional review of this movie.
WARNING: This review is not for those who have yet to see the film.
The story:
A dark dingy world devoid of light hides an insidious conspiracy of malevolent forces. John Murdock awakens in a bathtub filled with stale, dirty water, a trickle of partially dried blood runs from the center of his forehead and down his face. John has no idea how he came to be in this situation, in fact he doesn't even know his own name, he gets out of the tub, slipping and sliding toward the bathroom door, upon exploring the rest of the apartment he finds the corpse of a young women. Scared and confused by the discovery he makes his way out of the building, stepping into the dank and dismal street of this dark city, he begins his journey to discover his identity.
John is soon met by three Strangers dressed in long black coats, gloves and wearing black fedoras and bowler style hats. The three strangers seem to know more about John then even he does, a confrontation ensues and John is cornered by the pale faced, bald headed strangers. The leader of the three who goes by the name of Mr. Hand, raises and slowly waves one of his hands in front of John's face and commands....."Sleep".
The Stranger is surprised by John's non reaction to the suggestion, eventually John eludes the Strangers and once again finds himself aimlessly wandering the unfamiliar streets of an equally unfamiliar city. Ultimately John Murdock learns his name, but is still lost as to who he really is, he meets up with a mysterious doctor who claims to know his true identity, John is also being pursued by his estranged wife and a police detective who wants to question him in regards to the murders of ten local prostitutes.
Through the doctor and various run ins with the Strangers John learns that the city is a fabrication, created by the Strangers and used as a kind of testing ground. He also learns that other people have awoken in the past, just as he had, individuals who unlike the rest of the inhabitance of the city do not fall asleep at the stroke of midnight, a time of great importance to the strangers. It is at midnight that they alter the city as well as the lives of the people who exist there, right down to ones station in life, memories and even their mental and emotional makeup.
The doctor informs John that although there have been others that have awakened he is different, for he actively rejected the programing that had been set up for him, the intent of which was to make him a killer. He also learns of the strangers and their aversion to water, in addition to this he is also told the truth regarding the true nature of the city. He learns that the inhabitants of this dark domain were brought there from somewhere else, but as to where exactly they had come from, no one remembers.
John is also in search of a mysterious sunny place known as Shell beach, but when he comes to find what he thinks is the entrance, he finds nothing but a brick wall covered with a billboard sized painting of the mystical and now seemingly mythical place. The poster is soon ripped down revealing the wall behind, John then breaks through the wall with a sledge hammer and discovers the mindboggling truth. He and his fellow inhabitance of the dark world are in fact situated on top of a immense drum shaped disk, a veritable island floating within space.
A world of Darkness and Ignorance:
"Gnostic's typically present a view of the universe shared by neither Classical Greek philosophy nor the orthodox Christian tradition. The former typically saw the universe as a cosmos (from the Greek 'kosmos' meaning 'universe' with implications of totalising order and harmony). The Christian view may be likened to the Platonic view rather than the Stoic one, in that Christianity typically held the material universe to be only one level of reality, and that beyond it lay an incorporeal universe superior to it. The Gnostic view, on the other hand, held materiality to be a flawed creation, or if not flawed at least incomplete. Like Platonics, Neo-Platonics and Christians, they also held the universe to be only the most immediate level of reality; unlike these groups, they did not view the universe as a cosmos, but rather as a flawed process."
"Humans are generally ignorant of the divine spark which resides within them. This ignorance is fostered in human nature by the influence of the false creator and his Archons, who together are intent upon keeping men and women ignorant of thier true nature and destiny. Anything that causes us to remain attached to earthly things serves to keep us in enslavement to these lower cosmic rulers."
The darkness in which the characters of Dark City live represents the imperfect nature of our own wold. It also represents ignorance, the citizens live in a stat of semi-unconsciousness, they are in a sense sleep walkers, a term associated with certain philosophical movements. This ignorance is a direct result of the sparks of light within humanity being separated from their true source, just as in the story structure of Dark City our souls, and bodies in this case, have been taken away from their true home and submerged in a world of bleakness and despair. For most of the inhabitance of this dark realm their ignorance is all pervasive, and as a result there is very little hope of breaking free from their prison. The first step toward release is the discovering of ones predicament, for some the ability to achieve this is within their nature, for others however the darkness holds them completely under its control. The flawed nature of the human being and of the material world are the creations of an imperfect and ignorant being, or in the case of the Strangers, dozens of inferior beings. Even though they are technologically superior to humans they are in many respects inferior, this should not be seen as a contradiction between the characterization of the strangers with the film and those of the Archons of Gnostic myth, more on this later. The inability of some to see beyond the veil of illusion therefore means that a mediator is required.
The Strangers/Archons:
"A characteristic feature of the Gnostic conception of the universe is the role played in almost all Gnostic systems by the seven world-creating archons, known as the Hebdomad (ἑβδομάς). These Seven, then, are in most systems semi-hostile powers, and are reckoned as the last and lowest emanations of the Godhead; below them—and frequently considered as derived from them—comes the world of the actually devilish powers. The Manichean's readily adopted the Gnostic usage; and their archons are invariably evil beings. It is as usurpers that they occupy their domain of the lower heavens and rule over their damned creation."
"The Gnostic's believed these powers created constraint, evil, darkness, death, deception and wickedness. Gnostic's thought the archons were inferior demonic beings, They intervened to separate humanity from God, and the universe became a prison controlled by the archons. Archons barred the passage of souls who were seeking to ascend to God after death, who were attempting to escape the world."
Some speculation is need to address the similarities between the Strangers of the film Dark City and the Archons of Gnostic myth. In all of the myths the archons are creations of another being; a higher being, this being is itself flawed for it is not the true god. This concept does not appear within the film, at least not directly. One of the things that is the same however is the hierarchy of the Strangers society, clearly there is a ruler within their particular culture. We know that the strangers came from another planet, but we are not told where they came from, but one must assume that they too had their own gods, or god. So even though this particular aspect is not expanded upon we can assume that there is something similarity between the two sets of beings. Furthermore, like the archons, the Strangers have ventured away from their true origins, or planet if viewed in the context of the film. As with the Archons the Strangers have an active role in creation, with the Strangers being even more closely connected to the formation of the material world. The Strangers also are jailers or guards watching over the beings that they have secured from another realm, presumably from earth. By keeping their captives sedated and ignorant of their true origins the Strangers are a fair representation of the Archons of Gnostic myth.
John Murdock/Gnostic Christ:
"Not all humans are spiritual (pneumatics) and thus ready for Gnosis and liberation. Some are earthbound and materialistic beings (hyletics), who recognize only the physical reality. Others live largely in their psyche (psychics). Such people usually mistake the Demiurge for the True God and have little or no awareness of the spiritual world beyond matter and mind.To be liberated from this predicament, human beings require help, although they must also contribute their own efforts. From earliest times Messengers of the Light have come forth from the True God in order to assist humans in their quest for Gnosis. Only a few of these savior figures are mentioned in Gnostic scripture; some of the most important are Seth (the third Son of Adam), Jesus, and the Prophet Mani. Gnostic's do not look to salvation from sin (original or other), but rather from ignorance."
John Murdock's role within the world of Dark City is twofold, he is on one hand someone who has himself just awoken from the deep sleep of ignorance and has come, at least partially in the beginning, to understanding the flawed nature of the world in which he lives. His second role is that of a savior figure. It should be noted that John's importance to those who he will eventually liberate from their own sleep walking activities, is not achieved by the removal of sin, the world view portrayed within the film is much more akin to the Gnostic world view, rather then the traditional Christian view. There seems to be no hope of salvation within the world that these beings inhabit, which is to say that their predicament is not the result of sin, but of their ignorance toward the truth. The truth here being that they are not who they think they are and that they inhabit a false world, a false reality. John Murdock is more like the Gnostic conception of a savior figure, the Gnostic Jesus did not save the world by dieing on the cross, which can be viewed as a passive act of salvation. The messengers of light that have intervened throughout history, in the Gnostic view, took on a far more active role in the performance of this task. The messengers that have come to the earth to liberate humanity struck out violently against those who hold man in bondage, their task is not to be passive but to shatter the veil of illusion which keeps the sparks of light separated from their true origins.
Shell Beach/Pleroma:
"The word means fullness from πληρόω ("I fill") comparable to πλήρης which means "full". The heavenly pleroma is the totality of all that is regarded in our understanding of "divine". The pleroma is often referred to as the light existing "above" our world. But, one aspect of the pleroma is as a place, the place where God resides and from where divine emanations and messages come to earth."
Shell Beach is a representation of the divine and true realm from which the sparks of light within humanity hope to reestablish a connection with. Some give themselves up to despair and end their lives, as does one of the characters, or they live out their lives in total ignorance, unaware that they will simply be reintroduced into the world and the same predicament, without the benefit of having gained any insight into the true nature of their world. Some individuals like John Murdock are destined to receive gnosis and thereby a desire to discover their origins, and to successfully wrestling control away from the imperfect and ignorant forces who hold creation in their clutches. The notion of the beach within the film and John's desire to go there can be seen as a metaphor for the realm of light, the pleroma, John's desire mirrors the affinity that the sparks of light within human beings feel toward the source, wherein lies the spiritual light.
Dark City/Pre-Socratic cosmology
"Anaximander boldly asserts that the earth floats free in the center of the universe, unsupported by water, pillars, or whatever. This idea means a complete revolution in our understanding of the universe. Obviously, the earth hanging free in space is not something Anaximander could have observed. Apparently, he drew this bold conclusion from his assumption that the celestial bodies make full circles. More than 2500 years later astronauts really saw the unsupported earth floating in space and thus provided the ultimate confirmation of Anaximander's conception. The shape of the earth, according to Anaximander, is cylindrical, like a column-drum, its diameter being three times its height. We live on top of it."
The great reveal within the movie occurs when the characters find the answer to the question of where they are and of the true nature of the reality in which they live. The viewer along with the characters are presented with an astonishing realization, a view of material creation that would make pre-Socratic philosophers such as Anaximander and Thales feel a sense of pride, knowing that after over 2500 years their cosmological notions are still a source of interest and inspiration. Our first glance of the true reality that exists behind and beyond the apparent reality presents us with a grand Anaximanderian view of the universe, the characters find that they are in fact prisoners on a city sized drum-like disk. As with Anaximander's cosmology the "earth" floats in space without any supporting structure to hold it in place, we must assume that the laws of physics as we comprehend them also apply to the universe in which the movie takes place and therefore the earth of Dark City is supported by gravitational force. The concept of gravity would not be discovered until thousands of years after Anaximander came to his cosmological conclusions, therefore in this context the earth within the Dark City universe, like the cylindrical earth proposed by Anaximander are at odds with each other.
"Most of the early students of philosophy thought that first principles in the form of matter, and only these, are the sources of all things; for that of which all things consist, the antecedent from which they have sprung, and into which they are finally resolved. Thales, the founder of this sort of philosophy, says that it is water."
After John Murdock discovers his true identity and thereby his destiny he uses his abilities to alter reality by bringing light to the world of Dark City, the first step toward change being the creation of water where it hadn't existed before. Water has always been a metaphor for cleansing, baptism, it is also connected to the origin of species. It is the life giving substance within which lies a reflection of the divine realm, the affinity that the strangers feel toward water is that of opposition and aversion. It is here that we find yet another connection with Gnostic myth, when the Archons set out to create humanity they looked into the watery substance that existed below them and within it they saw a reflection of the divine man, what in Kabbalistic teachings is referred to as the Adam Kadmon (the heavenly man or Anthropos, from which all our souls are derived). In this way they are tricked into bestowing upon humanity a spark of the divine, this is done without their knowledge for they are blind as to the influence of the higher forces from which they came. In Dark City we have pretty much the same situation, for there was obviously something was wrong with the plans that they had for the humans that they were experimenting on. The humans were not suppose to have any inclination of their true origins and yet as Mr. Hand reveals to John Murdock sometimes certain humans resist all their programing and awaken from their ignorant state.
So at the end of the film we find John Murdock in true Thalian fashion create an earth supported by water, no doubt safeguarding humanity from any further Archonic influence. So ends this special review of the film Dark City.................
But as long as the basic idea is conveyed....... 