User:Erik/Dark City

Themes
Dark City parallels second-century Gnosticism as dispensed by Valentinus. The classic Gnostic myth tells of "a radically transcendent power", not the Biblical God, creating life. In this reality emerge aeons, androgynous and eternal beings. These elements compromise the pleroma, the plenitude. The aeon Sophia produces Ialtobaoth, who believes he is the only god and creates a universe that is comprised of "discordant matter instead of spiritual concord". The aeons instill the pneuma, the "divine spark", in humans who suffer "the weight of manner" so when the spark is ignited, they can realize their true origin in the pleroma and their exile to the discordant universe.

Valentinus inflects the myth psychologically, and the Gospel of Truth is the core text of the Valentinian school. The aeons want to know their origin in the pleroma, and their lack of knowledge agitates them and blinds them. Their error that knowing should have an object leads to the fashioning of a world believed to be beautiful, and "[the] world is ours, a precipitation of spiritual misapprehension". Valentinus says that wanting to know and not being able to control an object leads to one's entrapment. Film Literature Quarterly's Eric Wilson writes, "In contrast, when one relinquishes fear and desire—when one realizes that there are no separate objects and no threatening outside—then one enjoys what one envisions: infinite visions of spirit."

According to Gnosticism, people live in a realm that they do not know is an illusion. Valentinus questioned how people could tell reality from the illusion; perceived reality could be another illusion, and their perception of reality could be considered insanity by standards of behavior in the illusory realm. Valentinus suggests paranoia, as a mode of interrogation, for resolving the conundrums. In Dark City, John Murdoch exhibits paranoia as "the aspiring Gnostic", where the Strangers are ignorant eternals. The Strangers combat death by trying to understand the human soul; they hope to discover an enduring essence when they change the identities of humans in their experiment. Their lives are fragmented, as evidenced by their names, like Mr. Hand and Mr. Book. Wilson writes, "[The Strangers] incorrectly believe that the soul is but a finite thing that can be manipulated. Fittingly, they perceive, and thus produce, only gloomy, moribund objects—the Gothic cityscapes that they nightly concoct."

Online references

 * VISIONS OF 'STRANGERS' DANCE IN HIS HEAD
 * Interview with Director Alex Proyas
 * Alex Proyas - Director, Dark City
 * Samuel Nunn
 * Samuel Nunn
 * Samuel Nunn



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Unused references

 * (Interview with director Alew Proyas and producer Andrew Mason about their film DARK CITY)
 * (Interview with director Alew Proyas and producer Andrew Mason about their film DARK CITY)
 * (Interview with director Alew Proyas and producer Andrew Mason about their film DARK CITY)

References to find

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 * (production report and interview with Richard O'Brien on DARK EMPIRE) (no LOC)
 * (Article on cities in film which refers to Eisenstein, Fritz Lang, film noir and the 1998 film DARK CITY.) (supposedly at LOC)
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 * (A discussion of the merits of DARK CITY and its influence on the Australian film industry) (no LOC)
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