Dark

You’ll be hard pressed to find a bigger Paul Schrader fan than myself, but after taking in his Dying of the Light/Dark experiment turned completely fiasco genuinely does not work, however it makes his next turn with creating First Reformed the most remarkable thing ever. How was he even allowed to make another feature after this one was taken completely away from him during post production, on top of the fact that this story is nonsensical is something I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand. I’m pretty familiar with the mess this was and I’ll explain what I can since I’ve now seen what was released by the studio followed immediately by Schrader’s bootleg cut he rendered personally titled Dark. To get out ahead of any descriptions I don’t think any variation of this movie or story works at all but the blatant and well documented studio interference is enough to have me seek out the different versions then becoming outraged over something that I have zero interest in, is personally why I get out of bed in the morning. This project nightmare began all the way back in 2010 when it was Nicolas Winding Refn attached to direct the Schrader script. With Harrison Ford and Channing Tatum currently attached, Refn would drop out to make Drive just weeks later. Fast forward to late 2013 with still no director which sees Schrader stepping forward to direct his own script with Nicolas Cage and Anton Yelchin replacing two massive stars. The shoot took place in January of 2014 which marks the beginning of the major uphill battle inside the editing room. As the story from Schrader is involving someone who’s suffering from dementia that’s worsening as they try to grasp onto key information helpful to their revenge, some absolutely bonkers editing techniques were employed and things quickly became strained with the studio attempting an entire takeover for months. It was October 16th, 2014 when Schrader announced “We lost the battle. “Dying of the Light,” a film I wrote and directed was taken away from me, re-edited, scored and mixed without my input. Following this, cast and crew members took to wearing t-shirts supporting the director in what became a strange fight for artistic integrity. Like I mentioned previously I’m not sure if his original cut would have been successful, I’d guess not since the story is just strange on top of everything else but having your work stripped and maimed is maybe the worst possible outcome as a creator, regardless of how the final work is you at least want to be able to say it’s your own. On December 5th 2014, Dying of the Light in its studio commandeered format was released day and date to poor reviews across the board with it seemingly being a lost battle in the creative fight. Schrader and everyone involved obviously did what they could to move on and keep working, in 2017 he began to revisit his first cut of the film and begin editing once more. Only working off of DVD copies of the work print, he was able to crudely paste together some of the original idea that he once pursued for Dying of the Light. Despite offering to rework the film completely for free, Producers were less than interested which forced him to use whatever material he had left over. While the directors cut, known as Dark was never given a legitimate release but can be seen by prior request at UCLA Film and Television Archive, the Harry Ransom Center or the Museum of Modern Art Department of Film. In 2018 Schrader uploaded Dark to Internet Archive where it can be seen by those who want to view it. While I can easily say that both Dying of the Light and Dark are two of the worst things I’ve seen from my guy Paul, I thought Dark was a fascinating experiment in the same way Megalopolis was. Just choices you have to see to believe that I find far more entertaining and a way better match for Nicolas Cage doing his lunatic thing in a mega low budget endeavor. Paul Schrader Ranked