Dark Days

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In recent years, many regional theaters in the United States have staged
Maxim Gorky's "The Lower Depths", a play that revolves around the lives of
the dregs of society in a flophouse in Czarist Russia, with homeless people
in the leading roles. Such productions were meant as a commentary on the
downward spiral of the American economy, which for many marginalized people
meant catastrophe on a par with the Great Depression.

Against insurmountable odds, a 21 year old Englishman named Marc Singer
descended into the cavernous train tunnels beneath the Amtrak station in
midtown Manhattan five years ago with a 16 mm camera. His goal: to make a
documentary about the homeless people who had taken shelter in these lower
depths. Trying to avoid the inhumane city-sponsored shelters that had
become a scandal in the press, they constructed "homes" made of scavenged
building materials and filled them with the amenities of middle-class life,
including pets and television sets (electrical power was tapped from lines
in the tunnel.)

Not only did these fearsome people living in fearsome conditions open their
lives up to the novice film-maker, they provided the crew, learning as they
went along, much as he did. A profile on Singer in the NY Times reveals the
kind of creativity that went into the production. "When they needed a
dolly, they built one using an old grocery cart and an abandoned stretch of
rail. They ran cable underground, hooked up to whatever power source they
could find, and for lighting used hand-held floodlights mounted on metal
crosses. He gave a dozen of the homeless -- three of whom died before the
film could be released -- part ownership in the film, so they stand to
profit if it makes money."

Despite the fact that most of these people survived by panhandling on the
street, not a single piece of equipment was stolen. Furthermore, since
Singer--not knowing any better--utilized a old-fashioned 16 mm camera
rather than the modern digital video camera, the documentary has a more
burnished and professional quality than one would expect. It succeeds not
only as social commentary, but as art.

The substance of the film consists of the tunnel people going about their
daily routines, which includes cooking, cleaning, playing with their pets,
socializing and going out into the daylight to find a way to eke out a
couple of dollars. This means collecting bottles on the street or finding
used goods in dumpsters that could be resold on the street. In New York
City's more bourgeois neighborhoods, defined as they are by conspicuous
consumption, there are always pricey goods that are thrown out for no good
reason. Indeed, the contrast between the misery beneath the city's streets
and the opulence above it constitute the main social comment in the film,
despite the rather wise choice of the director not to preach such a message.

In an interview with the NY Times, Singer explained what he wanted to
accomplish with "Dark Days", least of all to preach any kind of message:

"I never wanted to go on a mission with this film. I never wanted to
convert anyone into helping the homeless. But we look at them as if they're
not human. It's like there's an invisible wall there. But you go and meet
them, and it turns out they're just like me and you; they just don't have a
home."

Most of the film's subjects are crack addicts, including an
African-American woman in her 50s named Dee who is shown smoking
immediately after recounting the death of her two children in an apartment
fire while she was high on crack. For all of these people crack is a way to
deliver themselves from the miseries of their lives, even though the drug
is also one of the main causes of their misery.

Most are aware of that, as becomes evident in a discussion between Dee and
Ralph, a Puerto Rican man who has taken Dee in after her shack has been
burned down by a tunnel dweller seeking revenge for some offense. (Although
the film does not spell out the nature of the conflict, one can only assume
it is over drugs.) Ralph has lost everything because of crack, including
his marriage and a middle-class life-style. He hasn't smoked crack in over
3 years, but admits that the temptation is always there. When he insists to
Dee that the only to stop smoking crack is to just stop it, she replies
that his badgering her only makes her feel like going out and scoring some
crack.

Ralph, like Dee, has his own traumatic memories about the cost of getting
high to his immediate family. He confesses that his 5-year-old daughter was
raped and mutilated while he was in jail on a drug charge.

That Dee and Ralph can live together fits in with the general absence of
racial tensions in the tunnel, no doubt explained by the recognition that
those in the lower depths need to rely on each other's solidarity to
survive. One of the other main characters is Tommy, a young white teenager
who ran away from alcoholic and drug-addicted parents. He looks like the
boy next door.

The film has a "happy ending" of sorts, as Amtrak is forced to back down
from an assault on the shacks which it has deemed correctly as a danger the
health of their inhabitants. (The film is filled with shots of marauding
rats. Also, the sound of the trains is omnipresent. One tunnel dweller was
hit by a train during the filming.) Through a combination of legal action
and mass pressure, advocates for the homeless successfully establish the
point that unless an alternative to the shacks is provided, the tunnel
people will just end up on the streets or in the dangerous city-sponsored
shelters. At the last minute, the tunnel dwellers receive modest new
apartments in a clean, well-kept building provided through federal aid to
the homeless.

The perpetually snide Village Voice did not like this ending, stating:
"There are too many shots of the tunnel dwellers gleefully wrecking their
shacks and of their happy faces and glib pronouncements as they take
possession of their new dwellings."

As a socialist, I have a totally different reaction than the
postmodernist/liberal Village Voice. I see the happy ending as one that
embodies the kind of message that socialists put forward. In a world
divided between the super-rich and the countless numbers of those living in
the lower depths, either in train tunnels or in the shanties of 3rd world
countries, we explain that the former condition is tied to the latter. We
also treasure the happiness of the great masses more than we do the right
of the small minority to live like Croesus. Until those conditions are
eradicated, we will not rest for a moment.

"Dark Days" is showing right now at New York's Film Forum. It is not to be
missed.


Louis Proyect
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