Dark Days | Marc Singer | Enlightening and Haunting

Dark Days | Marc Singer | This may be all of us, after a cataclysm

DVDs:

Dark Days

	Dark Days Marc Singer Palm Pictures / Umvd, 2001 average customer review:based on 42 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Enlightening and Haunting

"Dark Days" is a startlingly amazing achievement on so many levels (including the subterranean ones). First time film-maker Marc Singer moves from the UK to the USA as a very young man to give himself a "fresh start", and subsequently befriends a group of homeless people in NYC. He becomes curious about their "digs" in the Amtrak tunnel, and retreats there to investigate further. One thing leads to another, and eventually Marc and his homeless companions become film-maker and crew to "Dark Days".

Given the facts of how it came together, this film would have to be considered remarkable even if it were lousy. Actually, it's terrific. Here we are privy to the daily lives and struggles, resourcefulness and ingenuity of a group of homeless people, and it's a real eye-opener. "Dark Days" is not filmed in typical narrative documentary style; it lets its cast of characters speak for themselves. To get more background information, one can view it with Marc Singer's commentary "on". You will want to view this film more than once anyway, and each time it becomes more compelling, as are the people involved in it. In addition, the supplementary features on the DVD are extraordinary as well.

Why anyone would want to bore themselves to death with "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" and the like, I'll never know. Marc and his friends Ralph, Henry, Tito, Greg and the rest of them are infinitely more interesting. Step outside of yourself and your bourgeois lifestyle and visit them via "Dark Days". You won't soon forget it.

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This may be all of us, after a cataclysm

Thoughtfully done by an apparent empath, without hurrying, without staging. The pace seems to faithfully replicate the actual days lived by each person who was kind enough to let us into their lives. Well done.

Fascinating

It was interesting to watch how these people survived in such appalling conditions. I think they lied to themselves to deal with it (as the end of the film tends to prove my belief) but I admired their fortitude. Nobody should have to live in such a bleak environment.

Dark Days - Got Balls?

People live in the NYC subway. Are you freaking serious? That's awesome! We should all aplaud Marc Singer for making this documentary about real people who live down there. Why? Because I sure as hell wouldn't do it. Have you ever seen a NYC rat? They could eat your foot. Cinematically it doesn't even matter because the story is enough, but Singer does a great job given the circumstances. He even won the cinematography award at Sundance in 2000. I was a little shocked by that one. Just validates the expression, "only two kinds of people can afford to live in New York, millionaires and the homeless." I don't know who said that.

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Evocative film

DARK DAYS goes underground to show how the mole people in the tunnels of New York city live. By showing the homes that they've built and their attempts to yield power over their lives DARK DAYS emphasizes the universal need we all share for a sense of home.

As we shift through the dark space of their world that is at once claustrophobic and cavernous, we see the mundane rituals of ordinary life play out: cooking, raising pets, cleaning, and showering. The men (and one woman) of this film speak of a life lived autonomous from societal intervention. One senses that the filmmaker, and more adamantly the homeless themselves, are trying to convince us that here in the subterranean garbage disposal of life, their needs are being provided for by the trash of the world that is chewed up and spit out. In the film, these leftovers become a metaphor for the people themselves - as they revel in finding a treasure of discarded donuts, or show their opportunist nature by collecting cans for cash to buy heroin. As our waste becomes their livelihood, we start to see them more and more as individuals. "We're not homeless," one man tells us, "homeless is when you don't have a home." But then his friend corrects him. "Nah, you're still homeless. You just ain't helpless." But as the film progresses, we start to perceive something in the darkness, something invisible around the edges that keeps them buried underground; it's their addiction to drugs, and the memories of past lives that are fraught with anguish and suffering. They are lost souls - shadow people moving through an ethereal, timeless landscape.

I highly recommend this film.

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