Dark Days

This movie hits upon all the emotional movers: laughter, sadness, regret, hope. The alternative life style is like you've never seen or heard or could have understand through the usual stereotypes. The screen shots are well captured and the music of dj shadow neatly completes the puzzle.

The only part I didn't enjoy was the ending. Not that I have anything against those sorts of endings, but as Marc Singer himself told me after the movie, it was unrealistic. It was only possible because of the negative press associated with the issue and the particular homeless of the film. An all-too-real look into american subcultures shouldn't stray into fantasy in the end. I would have lengthened the beginning and middle, and simply left out the ending. BUT, the movie was still great, 9 of 10.

Dark Days is an excellent documentary highlighting the hardships faced by the homeless people of New York City. Castigated and mistreated by citizens and government officials on the streets, the homeless resort to living in the underground railway tunnels, where they will be left alone. Mark Singer does an excellent job of showing that the 'land of the free' is not so free when people are denied basic human rights. Singer allows his audience to partake in communication with the homeless, something we rarely take the time to do when we pass a homeless person on the streets. His documentary helps us understand their backgrounds and misfortunes and how they came to be homeless. Singer's documentary really compels one to fight the stereotypes and discomforts associated with the homeless. He captures human suffering in a place where we most often forget to look for it.

DARK DAYS (2000) *** First time filmmaker Marc Singer won independent festival accolades for his debut in documentary storytelling with this gritty, heart-felt and all-too real depiction of New York City's homeless community living in the dank, hellish train tunnels of Grand Central Station and their plight of trying to survive day to day with no hope in sight for redemption among the throw-away society the nation has been partaken to. Singer, who actually lived with his subjects for two years, gave up much of his life savings and his own personal lifestyle, employed many of the film's profiled as crew and in the end run split profit sharing as well. Although by the end of the film those depicted are shown with a positive ending throughout the sense of desperation, anger and pain is on full display.

This movie is amazing. Essentially made by the homeless about the homeless (with some help from an Englishman with no film experience). The 16mm looks amazing, and the darkness of the underground is a great setting. This movie won awards at Sundance and it's not hard to see why, this sort of bleeding heart left story line is always good for a for awards. This film actually deserved all the awards and it's not often I say that about a movie. It is essentially the story of homeless people living in a community under Penn Station in New York, and all the characters are engaging and fun, even if it is hard to understand them at times. This is what documentary film making should be about, this movie wasn't made by a film student, it was made by someone who felt deeply for the homeless and decided to help them. And because of this film all the homeless living there were given homes.

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, 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 met 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. So our waste becomes their livelihood. We see them cook cornbread, they've got TV and radio and a space heater. "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.