I think Alex Proyas was my first, official “favorite filmmaker.” “The Crow” had a profound impact on me when I finally watched in July of 1994, and I watched it a ridiculous amount of times when it came out on video. Next to the original “Star Wars” trilogy, I think it’s the movie I’ve owned the most copies of over the years. But Proyas quickly became more than just a one movie wonder for me- “Dark City” built off of that goodwill four years later, and Proyas became a filmmaker whose each film became an event for me, even if the general public didn’t always catch on.
What is it about Proyas’s films that just connect with me? In ramping up to this deep dive into his work, I think what makes Proyas such an interesting, visionary filmmaker is how he views the reality of each film through one thing that shifts the world out of alignment. Every feature film of his has one thing where the perspective of how the world operates is out of balance, and it’s typically up to the protagonist to discover it, and get that world back on track. Sometimes that is spelled out in relatively simple terms, whereas other times it’s layers upon layers of a mystery that needs to be unraveled. It makes all the sense in the world that his production company is called Mystery Clock Cinema, especially since time is usually something the main characters are working against.
I finally watched his first feature, “Spirits of the Air, Gremlins of the Clouds”, after many years searching for a copy in 2010. I cannot say that I was disappointed with it, because one can recognize the visual imagination in it, but it just did not have the certainty of vision blended with dramatic weight I had become accustomed to from Proyas’s work. The narrative of a stranger who comes upon an isolated brother and sister in a post-apocalyptic wasteland doesn’t seem to have any forward motion, and though tensions arise between the characters, there isn’t much in the way of drama to carry the film forward through 96 minutes. Rewatching it over a decade later- now on Prime in a wonderfully remastered print as opposed to the cheap DVD-R I first saw it on- the narrative continues to lack both tonal consistency (the time isolated has had an impact on the wheelchair-bound Felix and Betty, his largely silent sister) and substance, but I think the thematic ideas came more into focus for me.
Felix and Betty’s home is adorned with crosses, whether they are on the walls, hanging from the roof like chimes or decorations, or planted in the ground, such as when we watch the stranger walk up at the beginning of the film. The film does not have an obvious religious viewpoint, however; we do not see the siblings pray at the dinner table or practice any religious rituals. As the movie progresses, though, faith is something that becomes a central concept in the narrative. At their first dinner together, the stranger is talking about his journey- he is on the run for reasons never explained- and says that maybe he’ll fly away. Felix is immediately intrigued, but it triggers Betty; you see, their father planted the idea of flight in Felix’s head, and he had been determined to make something for them to fly in until an accident left him in a wheelchair. Betty is worried that, if Felix begins to try and fly again, she will be alone, whether they succeed, or the worst happens. That is the drama I did not pick up on the first time; whether I was too transfixed by the film’s striking imagery and its rich sound mix (by Peter Miller, whose soundtrack is available on several streaming music platforms) initially, now I can see Proyas is tweaking narrative tropes- in most movies of this narrative type, you expect the stranger to be a threat to those taking him in in a more direct, physical way than is played here. The faith on display in this film is Felix’s, faith that he will finally be able to succeed at the thing he’s wanted to achieve for much of his life.
I was thinking a lot about Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Andrei Rublev” during this viewing. The obvious comparison would be the prologue of that film, where a medieval man takes off in a primitive hot air balloon, and achieves flight before crashing back to Earth, but the sequence that, I think, Proyas is more referencing in this movie is the famous casting of the bell that closes Tarkovsky’s film. Felix is very much like the young bellcaster, trying to accomplish something extraordinary despite all logic and reason, and- when it succeeds- the emotion is overwhelming, not just because he accomplished it, but because it represents hope and optimism for the world moving forward. We never learn why the concept of flight feels insurmountable in this world- after all, Felix has a book on the subject he has been using to formulate his ideas and work- but the important thing is, for these characters, it is something to be accomplished, and when it is, it has meaning for them, both in the moment, and moving forward.
There was a time before “The Crow” for me, and a time after “The Crow”. Before watching Proyas’s film for the first time in 1994, my moviewatching was largely dictated by what family wanted to see; yes, I would occasionally go outside of the box from their interests, but it was the exception, not the rule. After “The Crow”, and after I turned 17, all bets were off, and my journey towards becoming a more adventurous moviegoer began.
It’s difficult to quantify what a jarring shift “The Crow” felt like for me. Visually and musically especially, I had never seen or heard anything quite like it in theatres. The movie didn’t look like anything I had seen outside of the Burton Batman films, but even those still felt like Hollywood productions with recognizable faces and ideas. I think this was the first, true independent film I had seen on my own, and it was an original.
Few worlds are as bleak as the one “The Crow” inhabits. This is as dystopian a world as has ever been created in a recognizable reality. On first glimpse, you might think that the “one thing” that feels off in this vision of Proyas’s is simply the idea of supernatural resurrection for the purpose of revenge, but it’s really how Detroit in this film (and even though the city goes unnamed in the film, T-Bird’s phrase “Motor City motherfuckers” makes it pretty obvious) reflects a world where hope feels truly lost, and crime and corruption have won. It’s brought over from James O’Barr’s graphic novel, but how different does the city in “The Crow” feel to the glimpses of Flint, Michigan that Michael Moore gives us in “Roger & Me”? One of the most profound things that fantasy fiction can do is hold up a mirror to the world as it is, and for O’Barr- whom was working through the grief of his own fiance’s violent death- the world was cruel and unforgiving. What the film is able to ultimately provide- and it does so in Brandon Lee’s great, final performance as Eric Draven- is hope that the next day will be better than the last. In my most recent watch, Shelley’s dying line to Albrecht, “Tell him to take care of Sarah,” stuck in my head, and as Draven’s violent, vengeful mission progresses, it occurred to me how much of that mission wasn’t just about avenging Shelley, but in putting Sarah in a better position in life after he’s gone. Yes, his saying “morphine is bad for you” and insisting Darla go be a mother to Sarah feels like cloying sentimentality, but it’s a crucial moment in the film, forcing Darla to be a mother she forgot to be, and giving Sarah a choice to accept this opportunity. Eric is making sure he fulfills Shelley’s dying wish, not just his own need for revenge. It’s Sarah’s voice at the beginning and the end of the film, and she is the hope that, after Eric’s mission is done, the world will be a better one after he is reunited with Shelley. This is something that, for me, elevates the film above O’Barr’s graphic novel (though the graphic novel is still great)- there’s a single focus to O’Barr’s world. For Proyas, something more was required to, ultimately, stay true to O’Barr’s vision, and his own.
I don’t think another review has gotten me more excited to watch a film than Roger Ebert’s 1998 review for “Dark City”. That Ebert likened it to both “Metropolis” and “2001: A Space Odyssey” in his opening paragraph could not have gotten me more stoked; I had seen both by that point, and even if my love for them was not as complete yet, I appreciated them enough to understand, if Ebert was comparing Proyas’s follow-up to “The Crow”– my favorite movie at the time- to them, it was a big damn deal. Classes did not go by fast enough for me on opening day; I raced to the North Dekalb Mall AMC theatre after I was done with school, and the experience was exhilarating.
Watching “Dark City” in the perspective of how I’m looking at Proyas’s career, it’s interesting to view the world of the film through a multitude of different vantage points. From the Strangers’s point-of-view, the “one thing” that is off in the world they built to study humanity is an incomplete human imprint, who doesn’t carry the same memories and experiences they wanted him to carry, and thus, does not behave as they expected him to. For John Murdoch, however, everything is off-balance, and for the same reason- he does not have “his” memories or experiences (which are not really his), so waking up in a bathtub, looking at a suitcase, or a postcard, and seeing a bloody knife and dead woman in his hotel room, not only begins the film’s mystery proper, but puts him on an opposite trajectory than The Strangers- as chaotic as Murchoch makes their world, his will only snap into focus.
Part of what makes “Dark City” such a rich viewing experiences are the questions around the edges of Murdoch’s story we find ourselves wondering. It’s reasonable to assume that Emma (Jennifer Connolly) was imprinted at the same time as John, but what if they have been married for several cycles (which, I would image, equals 12 hours, since tuning always happens at 12), and in this one, the Strangers only changed one thing- Emma’s infidelity, using it as a catalyst for John’s intended murderous tendencies- so they could see the effects on a marriage? Think about the married couple at the dinner table; one cycle, they are a blue-collar family whose father works too many nights, but after their tuning, he’s suddenly the boss, and the table- and house- is much bigger. The dynamics between the characters are the same- just their circumstances are different. (Maybe John and Emma have “been married” for longer than we think they have.) In theory, such experiments could lead the Strangers to be able to fully understand humanity, and reach the concept of the soul, but in tweaking their subjects’s realities rather than letting them act of their own free will, they have forever doomed themselves to never truly getting there, because they need to maintain control. (Thus possibly revealing one thing they DO know about humanity- mankind values their individuality, and thus, don’t appreciate people who get in the way of that.) The irony is, Murdoch IS their ideal subject of study, but he’s also a threat to their existence, and would be even if he were not able to tune. This raises the question- Why did they allow Walenski, the former cop, to roam around even though his existence- and understanding of the world- is as threatening to them as Murdoch’s? Is it simply because he did not develop the ability to tune, or is it because their hubris was so great, that they never expected to lose control, and he would simply be dismissed as crazy? The eventual fates of Walenski, and the Strangers, seem to imply the latter.
In his Great Movies revisit of “Dark City”, Ebert places Emma as the “heart of the movie,” and that is a fair assessment. But whereas the love she tells John she feels for him in the jail has certainly never wavered throughout the film- thus providing a valuable insight into humanity, which the Strangers have lost sight of, at this point in the movie- it’s still building off of the manufactured relationship the Strangers built. It’s John’s reaction to her declaration of love- to use his power to shatter the glass so he can kiss her (which has always been one of the most emotional moments of the film to me) that is the genuine love action in the film, and one he will build off of in the future, after that meeting of “Anna” on the pier of Shell Beach. (I will say, Connelly never receives the credit she deserves for her performance in this movie. She has scenes with Rufus Sewell and William Hurt as Detective Bumstead that are as moving as anything in her Oscar-winning performance in “A Beautiful Mind”.)
What Proyas does in “Dark City” is ask the “big questions” about existence that “hard sci-fi” explores at its best, but within the framework of science fantasy adventure tropes. A year after this film crashed and burned at the box-office, but not before Ebert recorded a must-listen audio commentary (one of the reasons “Dark City” was one of the first DVDs I bought when we dove into the medium), and put this film atop his 10-best list for 1998, “The Matrix” explored many of the same ideas, but within a world and genre (namely, action) that was more palatable for viewers. (The two films even used some of the same sets.) I’ve come to respect “The Matrix” more now than I did in 1999- as you’ll read in another filmmaker “deep dive” later in the year, coincidentally- but it eventually gives in to some of the least interesting cliches of the action genre, whereas “Dark City” manages to keep surprising us every step of the way.
I’ve now only watched Proyas’s 2002 rock comedy, “Garage Days”, three times. The film did not get a big release in the United States (it was pulled from the schedule in Atlanta just before it was to come out around my birthday in 2003), so I did the rational thing- I bought it on DVD as soon as it came out. The first viewing was to see it. The second time was to review it. The third viewing was for this deep dive. I knew I would enjoy it; I didn’t expect how it would hit me emotionally.
Just short of turning 44 as I watched it, I wasn’t prepared to reflect on how Freddy’s emotional journey in the film mirrored my own. I dreamed big about having a “celebrity” life. Writing film scores, maybe making my own films- that was what I wanted to come out of college doing. Like Freddy, though, the responsibilities of real-life seemed to get in the way of the dreams of a young man who wanted to conquer the world. There’s only so many times you can have things come so close to those dreams working out, only to have the rug pulled out from under you, before you have to accept that maybe those dreams are only that- dreams. Eventually, though, life puts opportunities in front of you that shifts your focus from the unattainable dream to the attainable potential of something better- a life with meaning and purpose beyond you. Like Freddy at the end, I still love making music, but it wasn’t what I was meant to do; my life now, with a wife and quiet life of family and friends, while I share my love of film- that’s the meaning and purpose I needed to find in my life.
As off the wall and stylized “Garage Days” is visually (I mean, there are two sections called “Fun with Drugs,” for crying out loud), it may also be the most grounded in reality any Proyas film has been. Rewatching it, this feels like a deeply personal film for him, and that’s one of the thing I didn’t notice in earlier viewings. This is the work of an older man looking back on being young and having dreams, whether they worked out or not. It’s not sobering or introspective, however (Proyas saves that for his darker fantasies), but realized in a way of storytelling that is meant for entertainment and wicked humor. Proyas loves these characters, and how weird they are, but also how they ultimately come together when it matters most. He wants to see them succeed.
So why does the band suck?
If you started this post and thought, “How is he going to tie ‘Garage Days’ into this idea?,” I think the tagline for the movie (“What if you finally got your big break…and you just plain sucked?”) says it all. In most films about bands trying to get to that big, celebratory moment on stage at the end, the band is supposed to be good- they may be over the hill, but Spinal Tap still has some great songs- but it’s telling that we never hear Freddy’s unnamed band perform. Whether they’re practicing or recording a demo or getting ready for a bar gig, we never hear all of one of their songs. It’s not until the end, when they’ve basically snuck on stage to finally have their big moment at a festival concert, that we hear the band actually play, and it’s easy to see why the audience reacts the way they do. It’s as if Proyas has seen too many musical dramas where the band is supposed to be good, and decided to be honest with his audience that his band is not good, and see if they still connect with the characters. As “Garage Days” goes on, the running gag of us not hearing them play is exactly that- a gag; we become much more engaged with them as characters than as a band, and that is where Proyas scores, and seems to understand where a lot of rock musical dramas fall short.
When Proyas came on to what would become “I, Robot”, it was known as “Hardwired”, and was more of a traditional murder mystery inspired by Issac Asimov’s Robot stories. Eventually, because of studio politics and obsession with existing IPs- as well as the casting of Will Smith as Detective Del Spooner- it became a summer blockbuster, and the biggest hit of Proyas’s career.
I’ve always admired “I, Robot” more than most critics, and that’s because, even with the blockbuster sheen of the film (which, unfortunately, turns the film into a conventional action movie in the third act), you can see a lot of what interests Proyas in the basic narrative of the script by Jeff Vintar (who wrote “Hardwired”) and Akiva Goldsman. As with “Dark City”, there’s a murder mystery that hinges on an anomaly in the world, but instead of aliens giving us false memories, it’s a robot who may, or may not, have violated the Three Laws of Robotics, as laid out by Asimov in his famous anthology, I, Robot, and other stories, and developed in the world of this movie by Dr. Alfred Lanning. Throughout the film, red herring suspects are given in the form of US Robotics CEO Lawrence Robertson (Bruce Greenwood) and, most notably, Sonny, a unique robot by Lanning (whom programmed him to violate the Three Laws) played by Alan Tudyk. That the ultimate “villain” in the film is VIKI, the AI control hub of US Robotics, falls in line with sci-fi’s long history of artificial intelligence run amok (and is a successor to “Terminator’s” Skynet), but also finds terrifying possibilities in an AI entity that is given free will, and the ability to evolve- VIKI’s interpretation of the Three Laws has understandable logic to it that, in a more cerebral film, might have been a wake-up call moving forward.
The final film of “I, Robot” is more faithful, I think, to the spirit of Asimov’s writing than people give it credit for (although personally, Dr. Susan Calvin- a key character in the anthology- should have been an older character in the film; if the film hadn’t become an action blockbuster, maybe she would have been). I read several of the Robot Series by Asimov in the lead-up to the film, and one can see how the film is drawing on different Asimov stories and narratives throughout. I think Proyas shows himself to be a strong, stylish action director on this film, even though “The Crow” and “Dark City” had plenty more memorable action scenes. The film is at its best when the focus is on the characters of Spooner (played well by Smith) and Sonny (one of the best, most unheralded performance-capture characters in the evolution of the form); in the moments where those two are allowed to be characters, the film comes most alive, and Proyas’s gifts as a dramatic storyteller come alive.
Proyas’s 2009 film, “Knowing”, is the most philosophical disaster film ever made. (At least until Darren Aronofsky’s “Noah” in 2014.) And I think that is the best way to approach “Knowing”– as a disaster film. I wouldn’t have necessarily looked at it that way in 2009, but rewatching it for the first time in a few years, the film certainly has as much in common with films like “Independence Day”, “2012”” and even “Armageddon” as it does with speculative science fiction like “I, Robot” and “Dark City”. The way Proyas melds the two genres is fascinating, and it’s easy to see why many critics recoiled at the time.
Like John Murdoch in “Dark City”, John Koestler (played by Nicolas Cage) has a window into the inner workings of the world he inhabits. Rather than being the result of a failed memory imprint, however, Koestler comes to his knowledge in the form of a piece of paper, written 50 years ago, by an elementary school student. His son, Caleb, is at the same elementary school in the present day, when a time capsule which contains the paper is opened. Caleb’s receiving of the paper feels like a standard movie coincidence, but what if he was destined to receive it, so that his professor father could recognize the patterns in the numbers? The darkly-dressed men watching from a distance, whom bring to mind “Dark City’s” The Strangers, certainly feel like they’re following Caleb for a reason, although we will not know the truth of why until the end of the movie.
One of the great philosophical questions we are faced with is whether we believe everything that happens is meant to happen, or if it is simply chance that anything happens. If it’s the former, then we are nothing more than computer programs going through lines of code to serve a purpose that exists outside of our existence. If it’s the latter, then there is no purpose to anything other than to serve our own sense of individuality. In a way, “Knowing” is posing the same questions about individuality and the human soul, and how it survives, as “Dark City”, but coming to a very different conclusion. Rather than Murdoch triumphantly defeating the Strangers’s control over the world he lives in, Koestler is destined to fail, to be a victim of the natural design of how the universe seemingly operates. One of the strengths of “Knowing” is how, unlike other disaster movies, the end of the world is coming, and there’s nothing that can be done with it. It’s bleak, to be sure, but it feels like Proyas has the mindset of Stanley Kubrick in mind, who once said, “The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent. But if we can come to terms with this indifference, then our existence can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.” Koestler is unable to save humanity, but because he received that piece of paper, and tracked down the daughter of the girl who wrote it 50 years ago, he has supplied the light that will allow humanity to live on, even if it’s not on Earth.
(Where do I stand on how I think the universe operates? I believe the big moments in our lives happen for a reason, and we only get there through the choices we make when those moments occur, and we recognize them as “big moments.”)
“I guess I have the knack of rubbing reviewers the wrong way. This time of course they have bigger axes to grind – they can rip into my movie while trying to make their mainly pale asses look so politically correct by screaming ‘white-wash!!!’.” -Alex Proyas on the critical reception of “Gods of Egypt”
If, at this point, you cannot tell that I am firmly in Camp Proyas, I’m not sure what more can be said. Having said that, his assessment about people criticizing his 2016 fantasy epic, “Gods of Egypt”, is not taking into account that maybe, critics disliked his movie beyond the whitewashing. I know that, when I watched the film for the first time that year, that it was mostly European and Australian actors in the roles was the least of my issues with it (not because it wasn’t a justifiable issue, mind you; the film just had larger problems that caused it to not work). Having rewatched it for the first time in five years for this blog, I might feel differently now. It’s still not a successful movie, but it isn’t an out-and-out disaster, either.
“Gods of Egypt” takes place in an Egypt where Gods roamed Earth, and ruled over humanity. It’s not intended to explore a real world where that is happening- the film is a fantasy from the outset. That’s certainly fine if you want to make a unique big-budget adventure film (and if nothing else, this is an original big-budget film), but there’s not much to ground the film emotionally or thematically the way Proyas was able to do with his previous films, even a studio-interfered one like “I, Robot”. That is what made this one so damn frustrating to rewatch; it devolves into CG-infused action set pieces and narrative tropes without really having anything meaningful to say about what humanity might be like in a world where Gods ruled over them. How would man’s perception of the spiritual change when confronted by literal Gods? It’s ironic that “Gods of Egypt” begins with a sequence that uses narration to set the time and place; when the theatrical version of “Dark City” did that, it was the result of studio meddling (later excised in the superior Director’s Cut). Here, it feels exactly like bad narration always feels- like a lazy narrative shorthand to world building rather than actually building the world in front of our eyes…like “Dark City” did.
I really did not want to just tear this movie down this time around. There are some poorly-composed scenes of dialogue within CG landscapes and backgrounds, but there are also some absolutely great images in the film, as well. Ra’s ship in the heavens is the Proyas imagination I know and love in full force, as is the Sphinx in Set’s pyramid. I wish we had more time in the realm of the underworld; the trek to the gate of the afterlife, and the gate itself, is haunting and profound. That actually brings me to my biggest problem with the movie- the Gods actually get in the way of humanity in this film, which is actually the most profound message this film could have intentionally brought forth had it wanted to. Bek and Zaya do make a good emotional anchor for the film upon rewatch, but once Bek requires Horus for his own desires, and the two team up against Set, the film reverts focus back to Horus, and a battle between Gods feels more like a CG-action pissing contest than a film about love overcoming death, something Proyas succeeded at showing so beautifully in “The Crow”. The Egyptian Goddess of Love, Hathor, does what she can at grounding the film, but by the time Horus has transformed and flown away just as the end credits roll, the ship has sailed on this movie having any dramatic weight to anchor the fantasy silliness the film trafficked in for almost two hours.
What brought on this deep dive into Alex Proyas now? Well, in addition to a new short that is hitting the film festival circuit- see the trailer below- Proyas also has a new feature coming out in 2022. There’s more to explore with Proyas, and I would recommend checking out his Mystery Clock Cinema YouTube channel for more short films and other content from him. Also, it’s worth reacquainting yourselves with some of your favorite filmmakers every now and then in this way- it can make you see something in their work that maybe you didn’t notice before.
Viva La Resistance!
Brian Skutle
www.sonic-cinema.com
