Title: Dark Days
Genre: Documentary
Director: Marc Singer
Release: (2000)
Imagine next time you’re walking in New York City (or any number of other major American cities) that as you walk, you’re passing above a man cooking corn bread just a few feet below the sidewalk. Or, as you are sipping a glass of red wine in a dark bustling restaurant, that a woman is watching TV, while her neighbor paints his house, just a few feet below your leather heels. Or that as you are getting ready to start your day, standing in front of the bathroom mirror in your cozy 12th-story hotel room to grab a quick shave with your new electric razor, that there may be a man 14 stories below you doing the exact same thing.
These are just a few of the remarkably unremarkable events in the lives of the subjects of Marc Singer’s illuminating documentary, Dark Days. Singer takes his cameras down through the loosely grated vents and man-holes around New York City’s Penn Station, which double as the unguarded entrances to a world of the forgotten homeless who live, literally and figuratively, surprisingly parallel lives to our own. In the maze of abandoned subway tunnels that don’t go to the high-rises and happy hours that the rest of us want to go to anymore, a community of those seeking refuge from life on the streets have built for themselves a surprisingly suburban existence - complete with individual homes (some including even locking doors, windows and balconies), furniture, electricity, refrigeration, television, stove tops, and just about anything else that we’ve all long since replaced with shinier models of.
Of course, the life here can still be harsh. The majority of residents are or have been plagued with addiction or mental disease, and (as we do see) there always remains the threat of someone losing control and lashing out in these situations. But for the most part, a sense of community and neighborhood among the residents governs them and allows everyone to feel safe and relaxed in a way that the streets or shelters can’t provide. In fact, contrary to every Hollywood version of this I’ve ever seen, there was not a single voodoo cult gathered for a ritual human sacrifice; or long-winded, self-proclaimed prophet of the apocalypse; or world-renouncing secret billionaire; or organized band of disillusioned, young cubicle dwellers bent on orchestrating random acts of chaos on society, anywhere to be found.
Singer does a nice job of introducing a handful of characters who at first seem to be just interesting sidenotes to the situation, more useful as proof that there really are people living their whole lives underground than as individual characters, and then slowly revealing some of the darker realities of life that tell their stories and shedding light on how they came to be where they are now. (Be prepared for an absolute sucker-punch reality check when one of the men decides to open up about his daughter). He also dedicates a significant amount of time to the mundane details of day-to-day life that portray this invisible community as much more like any of our own than different. We watch as they venture “up top” occasionally to run errands to a few prime dumpsters and restaurant alleys, the way you or I might go to the grocery store, and we listen as they banter and bicker about chores and personal habits, in the familiar cadence of so many reality show contestants.
The result is glimpse of human life with almost a nature show flavor to it, documenting the amazing capacity of a species to adapt for survival when cut off from their native environment. But, also like a nature show, I would warn that you have to be in the right mood to pay attention to it to really get anything out of it. The first time I tried to watch this, I popped it in my DVD player, started half-watching while I was doing a few other things, and just couldn’t pay attention or be more bored with it. In giving it a second chance, I set everything else aside and focused on really paying attention to what was going on. Not surprisingly, I felt much differently about what I saw once I was really paying attention. Now if I can just remember that next time I’m only half-paying attention to the real homeless people on the streets around me, maybe it will actually mean something.
Grading
Story: N/A
Acting: N/A
Visuals: B (All shot in black and white, doesn’t particularly add to or subtract from anything though)
Originality/Innovation: B
Enjoyability: B+
Overall: B
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