The movie "Dark City," does a wonderful job combining various genres together to make something visually and intellectually enticing. It incorporates formal aspects film noir, dystopian sci-fi, and elements of expressionism to reinforce the ideas presented in the film. Throughout the film, I strongly felt that the primary goal of those behind the making of "Dark City" was to question what it is that makes us human, what is true love, and what is time and reality. Even though these questions can be arguably unsolvable, It is still meaningful to inquire about them. The director, Alex Proyas, and the cinematographer, Dariusz Wolski, do an excellent job presenting these thoughts to the viewers. .
In "Dark City," the neo-noir part of the film is visible from the outset. The sets are comparable to the nineteen fifties, clothing is similar to a detective film, and the location is in a city. The first scene in the movie introduces the main character, John Murdock, waking up in a bathtub naked in a sleazy motel to later finding a dead woman lying on the ground. This thus launches the audience into mystery that keeps intensifying to the very end. This ongoing puzzle is one aspect of film noir style that helps fuel this idea of us trying to figure out underlying questions and keeps the viewer exploring these ideas. Many times the film uses visual metaphors to emphasize the idea that the characters as well as the audience are in puzzle. For instance, when John's wife Emma goes to visit Dr. Schreber there is insert of a maze with a mouse trying to travel through it. This shows that the characters functioning like lab mice in the grand maze that the Strangers created to study them.
Another visual metaphor is the spiral that keeps reoccurring through the movie, like when John looks at fingerprint or detective bumstead looks at his coffee both show a distinctive spiral in it. Again this re-emphasizes the fact the characters are stuck in a bizarre mystery.
These were fairies that looked like they belonged in a New York City nightclub. ... I cut the mechanicals out of the play entirely in order to put the focus of the narrative squarely on the lovers, whose plight I felt had been maligned in each of the multitude of productions of Midsummer I had seen or acted in previously. ...