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copyright ©1999-2005
DigsMagazine.com.
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Plot synopsis
In the dark tunnels
by the Amtrak train tracks around Penn Station, a resourceful group of
homeless men and women squatted for years. Taking advantage of the
relative protection that the tunnels afforded from mainstream society --
as one of the residents notes, nobody in his right mind would come down
here -- they scavenged scrap wood to build their own one-room shelters,
furnished them with cast-offs rescued from the street curbs above. They
patched into the tunnel's electricity to light and heat their homes, and
provide a way for them to cook, even watch TV; they siphoned water from
the city's lines, took advantage of leaky water pipes for showers, made
makeshift toilets out of plastic buckets and discarded toilet seats.
After Marc Singer first heard about this subterranean community on a
television program, his curiosity led him down into the tunnels to learn
more. Soon, he started thinking about the idea of filming a documentary
about life in the tunnel -- never mind that Singer had never before made
a film. His obsession with the underground community led him to
spend two years living in the tunnels himself, as he persuaded a local
company to lend him a 16-mm Bolex camera, trained his new tunnel friends
to act as the camera crew, threw all his savings into the project, and
became broke and homeless himself. Dark Days is the movie that came out
of it all, offering an incredible, fascinating look at how people get to
the point where they're struggling to survive on the fringes of society,
and giving us a glimpse into how despite drug addictions and troubles
with the law, family abandonment and no income, human beings can come up
with some amazing ways to cobble together something resembling a home.
Review
I have to admit: fifteen minutes into Dark Days, I whispered to
my boy, "I'm kind of bored." Fortunately, he promptly
proceeded to ignore me, and so, I reluctantly continued to watch. I'm
glad I did, because in this case, a little (forced) patience turned out
to be well rewarded. What I thought was going to be a depressing look at
drugged-out, possibly insane, mostly incomprehensible "mole
people" turned into something a whole lot more interesting, as
Singer and his interviewees invite us into their makeshift homes, and
you find yourself increasingly impressed by the ingenuity that the
tunnel-dwellers have shown in managing to eke out something from
nothing. Anyone who's ever looked at a homeless person and thought that
they were just too lazy to get a job needs to see Dark Days; the
people we meet in the film work hard to get by, even if how they're working isn't the
traditional day job and the pay-offs seem minimal. Singer doesn't gloss
over the darker aspects of homelessness; it's sometimes all too obvious
that some of the subjects are drunk, or high, or mentally ill, or maybe
all three. But it's clear that Singer really respects his subjects, and
the fact that he actually lived with and befriended them comes through;
this isn't the sort of documentary where you feel like a dispassionate
observer looking in at something strange and foreign. In fact, though
it's impossible not to be moved by the more shocking revelations, as
when Dee describes how she watched her two young boys die in a fire on
the TV news while she was doing time in prison, it's the less dramatic
stuff that really gets to me -- watching Dee and her friend talking
about what constitutes proper cooking, or seeing Tommy playing with his
dogs in the penned-off area he's crafted for them right outside his hut.
Shot in black-and-white with an appropriately gritty look-and-feel, and
featuring a fabulously moody-perfect soundtrack by DJ Shadow, the
documentary is interesting in-and-of-itself. But take the time to watch
the DVD's extras as well, and you'll really appreciate just how amazing
an achievement Dark Days really is. —reviewed
by Yee-Fan Sun
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lounge . nourish
. host .
laze
. home .
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