Dark Days

A 20-year-old filmmaker decides to live with homeless people for two years, down in New York’s abandoned train tunnels: he wants to study the ways in which these people survive – how they feed themselves and keep warm and sleep, how they interact with one another and feel about their situation, what they think about the choices that have brought them to this point, about their mistakes and misadventures, about things they have done that cannot be made right. What emerges, as a result, is a thrilling documentary that allows us to peer at what lies hidden “beneath” the surface of modern city life, one that engages with homelessness not on academic terms – as detached, sociological documentation – but rather with a heartfelt humanity and a genuine capacity for compassion. And if you take into account the fact that the aim of the director, Marc Singer, when shooting this film was to make enough money to get everyone out of the tunnels, you realize that the documentary form, in its greatest moments, is not content simply observing the world: sometimes it – potentially – makes it better too.