Movie spends `Dark Days' under streets of New York

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Movie review

XXX 1/2 "Dark Days," documentary directed by Marc Singer. 84 minutes. Varsity. No rating; includes profanity.

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To the homeless people living in a New York train tunnel in Marc Singer's absorbing new documentary, "Dark Days," anything's better than facing the mean streets of Manhattan.

Comments range from "It can't be as bad as it is on top" to "I don't have to worry about paying Con Ed" (they've tapped into the city's power sources to run their refrigerators and television sets) to a certain wariness about Dumpster diving: "I only eat what I'm familiar with."

Their toilet conditions make outhouses look progressive; they shower in cold water dripping from a pipe. The rodent population competes with them for garbage. The winter temperatures chill; one woman is reported to have frozen to death.

But these people have established a sense of community, and they're proud of what they've created out of their Amtrak hideaway. Instead of cardboard, their homes are often constructed from plywood and carpets and discarded but usable furniture.

The tunnel dwellers are natural storytellers, and Singer lets them recite their tales of surviving crack addiction ("I never got back to that first high"), spending time in prison and being useless to their families (one young father's 5-year-old daughter was raped and burned while he was in jail), and earning spending money by selling bottles, cans and pornography. One man claims that $60-$70 "gets me through the weekend."

Singer, a 26-year-old London native and one-time model who made the tunnel his home for more than a year, set out to relieve the squatters of their dependency on Amtrak's hiding places.

At the same time, he hired them as crew members and offered them profit participation, provided the movie makes any money (it won three prizes at the Sundance Film Festival, although Singer is still in debt to credit-card companies). They watched "Hoop Dreams" for inspiration.

Eventually they were discovered by Amtrak authorities and faced with eviction. However, Singer didn't give up at that point. Working with the Coalition for the Homeless, he helped them get their own apartments and find jobs.

The movie, which was shot in black and white because color would make these conditions look even worse, has its rough edges.

Occasionally there's a shot of a homeless person looking self-consciously at the camera. Singer was prevented from filming the eviction, yet he shows the underground dwellers knocking down their shacks, compelled by Amtrak to return the tunnels to their original state. Inexplicably, they seem happy to do so.

But so much is so vivid here: the uncensored monologues, the roughhousing with a favorite dog, the open affection between friends, a haircut that turns into a kind of ceremony, a crack addict's confession about the deaths of her children.

Some of these hardy souls have lived this way for years, decades even, and they've lived not just to tell the tale but to suggest that they've created a viable alternative existence. At times, "Dark Days" almost makes you envious. But only almost.