There's a moment in the film Dark City when a car pulls up in front of an apartment block. It's night-time and the street is lit by various coloured lamplights and headlights. The apartment block itself of which we can only see the lower portion looks monumental in size, and the car, an antique shiny black Bentley, looks as if it's been driven straight out of the showroom. Dark City's cinematographer, Dariusz Wolski, eventually won the 2008 National Board of Review Award for Excellence in Filmmaking.
But then I look at some of the photos I have taken of the natural settings where I have trudged in recent weeks. Not so much Dark City as Light Country. Here, the compositions are largely organic and natural. There are no miniatures like in Proyas' film which can fool your perspective, but there are plenty of miniatures (tiny creatures and their equally tiny micro-cosms) that welcome and enlarge your perspective.
Dark City is a extremely beautiful film to look at. As is the land. Except the land demands your attention to the body too, since the land is the body. Film demands the opposite: that you sit and be sedated. Yet Dark City also demands that you get out... of this sedation, when everyone falls asleep. It demands that we get to Shell Beach, and the great ocean. Which kinda makes it more than just a film, does it not?
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