Dark Days (2000)
DIRECTOR – Marc Singer
STARS – Greg, Ralph, Tommy, Dee
RUNTIME — 80 minutes
On the cusp of the 21st Century, having survived the Y2K ‘disaster’ that never came, the people of the United States were brimming with hope. Federal elections for a new (and hopefully more pious) president were in full swing, the power of the Internet was being realised more and more each day, nationwide stocks were up, and nerds everywhere were sweating it out for the release of the PlayStation 2. It was a strange and exciting time to be alive.
But when Marc Singer released his immensely powerful documentary Dark Days in late August 2000, he brought to the screen a levelling-out of supercharged emotions. By releasing a film that was not on top of the world, but under it, Singer forcefully stripped away the tunnel vision many Americans were experiencing.
At least, for whoever saw it. Dark Days was given a very limited release, only going as far as Sundance and the film festival circuit. Nevertheless, it was awarded with numerous accolades, including Sundance’s own Best Documentary award, an achievement it more than deserves.
Delving deep underground in an abandoned Amtrak tunnel dubbed The Freedom Tunnel, Singer follows the lives of some of New York City’s homeless. The tunnel, which runs under Riverside Park in Manhattan, is a dank, lightless cavern of refuse and disease. Rat infested and garbage strewn, the tunnel also houses a ramshackle neighborhood of patchwork shacks, and some of the most remarkable people ever caught on film.
While everyone is given their fair share of the spotlight, Dark Days is mostly concerned with Freedom Dwellers Greg, Ralph, Tommy, and Dee. Through these individuals, we are treated to the everyday lives of the real down and out: we experience their struggles with work and finding food, and the daily trials faced with their homes, their health, their pets, and their most prized possessions (which, in Dee’s case, is a plastic cup with a built-in straw).
The film opens with Greg—an old backpack slung over his shoulders—descending a concrete staircase and entering an ill-used threshold, just as a train passes overhead. The noise of passing locomotives is a daily reminder of Greg’s life, and how far from grace he has fallen. Sitting on the floor with an electric razor in one hand and a large shard of reflective glass in the other, Greg explains his reasons for entering The Freedom Tunnel—”to escape the public eyesight.” In a decision between living in fear on the streets, and living in fear underground, he chose the latter. At the time of filming, Greg had been living in The Freedom Tunnel for over five years.
Ralph’s story is a little more complex: a divorcee and ex-junkie, he was forced to live on the streets when his wife kicked him to the curb. He gets by with a tired old Border Collie and his good friend Tito, who in the framework of the film acts as a focusing beam to bring Ralph out of his shell.
Tommy is the youngest of the Freedom Dwellers, a seventeen-year-old runaway whose parents were more concerned with their alcohol and cocaine to take care of their children. Leaving behind his two sisters, Tommy moved underground to escape the pressures of family life, preferring to live in a shack with his three dogs.
Lastly, Dee is a woman with perhaps the most heart-wrenching story of the group. An unabashed crack addict—she smokes up several times on camera—Dee was once a mother who lost her two children in a tenement fire. She longs for the days when she had parental responsibility, and weeps openly in relating the tragic events, only to seek solace in her crack pipe.
Of the four people Singer chooses to follow, all have served prison sentences at some point. This causal factor echoes throughout the film as being the basis for their underground lives, and in the cases of Ralph and Dee, is a source of excruciating pain and regret. The heavy pall of guilt blankets the two, who are brought together when Dee’s shack is burnt down, presumably by drug dealers.
While the on-film stories are fascinating, the behind-the-scenes work is also grounds for high acclaim. Going into this film, I foolishly assumed Singer was the kind of rich auteur who would get his hands dirty for a month or so of filming, then hop into his Escalade to the editing suite where he would leave it up to some poor schmuck to piece it all together. This, I am pleased to announce, is not the case.
Singer was, in fact, a Freedom Dweller himself. Living in the Tunnel for months after moving to Manhattan from Florida, his friends in the community suggested they make a film to show the world their stories. And so with borrowed equipment ranging from a 16mm camera to black-and-white Kodak film stock, Singer enlisted the Dwellers to construct DIY lighting rigs and dollies, and help him film their day-to-day lives.
Taking things one step further, Singer refused to allow anyone else to touch the footage. Editing it all himself—and all-but stealing the soundtrack from L.A.-based DJ Shadow—Singer maintained complete creative control of the project, a decision that slowed down production significantly. In fact, Dark Days was filmed almost two years before its August 2000 début, effectively pre-dating the Y2K scare and all the other garbage that came along with the dawn of the new millennium.
An astounding DIY project that managed to combat the System (during filming, Amtrak had attempted to evict the Freedom Dwellers) and the dismal living conditions of its subjects, Dark Days is an engrossing look at life and the human condition. It is a film that proves there is nothing that can’t be done; that, with a camera, anything is possible. And for a pre-9/11 film about the absolute rock bottom, that’s a tough thing to do. But Singer does it, and the world is all the richer for it.
5 out of 5
Originally published on Bullet-Reviews.com in 2011.