Darkon (2006)

Pretty Good

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I have actually known people who involve themselves in this brand of idiocy, and watching this movie was like having engage in a lengthy conversation with one (or more) of them again. These people, by and large, are 34+, make less than 10$'s an hour, make up history as they go along, and develop these strange delusions of grandeur based on the idea that *you* are "mundane" in all facets, and they are not.They will refer to each other in public settings as "Knight", "Master", "Lord", or "King"... You know what, pardon me as I explain.My first run in with this breed of individual outside of the ren-fair, was while I was kickboxing and had gotten involved with a weapons team. You could just enroll in the class, it was 40$'s a month, but it was a real deal "the guy that is teaching us has been training in these weapons for 30+ years" kind of class. We had a few members of the "SCA" (Society for Creative Anachronism) join up... Who also decided to show up in class as their "alters". They balls out fabricated huge sections of history, and claimed themselves scholars of the medieval period; they all regaled us with lengthy stories of their tribulations experienced becoming "Masters of the (insert weapon here)" and how the class was meant to refine their already terrible and deadly skills. They all were allegedly training with black belts of various exotic martial arts, they all were at least 90lbs overweight, and they were all underachievers with damaged egos. I left that class @ 17 with a sullied opinion of these "men", any one of which I could have beaten within an inch of his fat life despite their bardic tales of awesomeness. Later on in life I dated a girl who was into it, and I relayed my opinions of it all, she said "Oh that was just a bad experience". It wasn't, it was a normal experience. If there is one thing "Darkon" does really well, it's prevent this side of their "war games group" from bleeding through to the viewer. This film documents how pathetic, and debased these people are. From a psychological perspective, it's nothing more than a lesson in how far someone will go to escape reality when their real lives are in dire need of attention, this is just as bad as alcoholism, it's just not as obvious or widespread. It's nothing more than World of Warcraft LARP'ed (Live Action Role Playing)out by people who exhibit the same kinds of personal and societal failings. These people aren't "gamers", this isn't something only a "gamer" can understand... These people are dressing up in cheap (read: 450$ V 2000$ breastplates) metal armor and hitting each other with foam rods at public parks and local school or community soccer/football/baseball parks. If you saw these people doing this you would at first wonder if it was some professional reenactment groups... When you found the truth out, you'd laugh, and not in a good way. Further, to hear one of these fat dudes prattle off with "It's sickening that even out here, there is still that real world mentality that makes people need to better than someone else... and it ruins it!" Or to hear one of these floppy chicks blather on about how "I used to be a stripper (i'm sure she made a killing) and now I live in my parents basement at 28, but you know, even though other people my age have houses or can support themselves, at least I've got some station to be proud of." It's mind boggling that anyone sat down and watched this and felt anything other than pity for the people involved. The main subject, even eventually tells the true story of why he was cut out of his fathers business after he passed, for hitting one of his other brothers in the face with a phone... Because that's what honorable men do when their feelings are hurt. The only people who really make this "thing" interesting (Read: Fun to watch), are the Dark Elf players, who don't get nearly enough time. If this whole documentary had been about them, or really, just about "Darkon" itself, and not the people behind the characters, it might have been more entertaining and less ridiculous.Bottom line: Watch this if you're curious, but don't let the idiocy of the fact that this is what these people really do with their lives escape you. These people aren't to be admired, they're to be viewed with curiosity and studied from a distance. If one these people was your kid, you wouldn't be "proud" of them, you'd be seeking the best psychotherapist you could afford.

I'm sure there are folks who will be dismissive of the Darkon members, I don't think they understand it. I'm not one of them, I'm not of Darkon, nor anything like it. But there is something about it that connects. This is a documentary half way between "isn't this sort of cool" and "aren't these people weird?" It's probably too long, but that's a minor matter. I think the essential part of it is the point that some people in the modern world sort of miss our past. We live in a very high tech world, how many of us get angry as hell when the broad band goes out? And yet, fifteen years ago, there was no broad band.And as hard and as difficult life may be, things like broad swords rather than broad band, really aren't a part of it.I think this documentary, well, documents a part of our minds coming to surface -- that the cyber world doesn't necessarily satisfy all our instincts. These guys are kind of into Dungeons and Dragons, and Excalibur, and history, but also mythology.I think you can call them just big kids, refusing to grow up, but I do like the way the movie progresses, a kind of drama is accorded to some things that are obviously silly, to one outside the society. I'm not in it, so I can hardly say, but I can see why they do these things. I think it helps break out of every day life, and touch the past, and touch the myths.To answer why in the world these people do this is to answer why there is a mythology and stories of witches and fairies and goblins and on and on. I think these are folks who revel in mystery and history and alternate history, and maybe just plain old revel.My take on it anyway.

Darkon is Live Action Role-Playing, where the characters in the game assume different personas of their own creation and partake of different warring nations and factions in the Darkon universe. Not entirely unlike traditional Dungeons & Dragons, except the focus is not upon the stat-sheets and one's imagination, but the actual grandiose foam-weapon battles between armies.The documentary focuses on a drawn-out Darkon campaign fought between two warring faction leaders: Skip Lipman/Bannor (he's Bannor in Darkon), and Kenyon Wells/Keldar. Of the two, Skip is the more likable character, a stay-at-home dad with the utmost exuberance for Darkon's potential as a fulfilling and self-empowering creative channel. Kenyon/Keldar seems to stand for similar things, but then he doesn't take the Darkon fantasy as seriously as the other members of the documentary. Instead he uses it as a medium for him to channel his expansive, greedy determination.What is revealed by all this, is that these Darkon characters are not necessarily escapes or pure projections in another universe, but simply extended, exaggerated branches of their respective personalities inside the world of Darkon.That isn't to say Darkon is a strange, negative or absurd enterprise by any means. In fact, the documentary is positive for making the viewer re-examine all the real Live Action Role-playing and fantasy elements that take place in our communities (American football and sports, martial arts and "Reality-Based Self-Defense", New Agers and "shamans", yoga, religion, etc.) because they have long since been accepted by mainstream society as normal. But when fantasies become vivid enough to the ones enacting them, those fantasies bleed into real life and how we develop as members of our daily communities.

The first twenty minutes or so I was laughing at the absurdity of it all. But after relaxing a bit and just kinda of flowing into the idea of what it is these people are doing I enjoyed it. If you think about it, all these people are doing is making movies without the camera on a minuscule budget. I thought of all the people that hate their boring lives (which face it most of ours are) and these people are just doing something that however ridiculous makes their lives a little more interesting. Even their kids seem to be enjoying their parents play although I hope they are teaching their kids the difference between the two. I personally think it a little disturbing with how seriously some of them take this so-called game. However some of the others are just having a good time which I am all for. As Americans (or as humans for that matter) it is our right to do whatever the heck it is that makes up happy no matter what everyone else thinks. So enjoy this weird little gem of a film that I just happened to have seen on the IFC channel. Whatever you do, don't judge this too quickly.