Darkon Reviews

Sing, Muse, of the troubled realm of Darkon, and how brave Bannor of Laconia dared challenge Keldar, the duplicitous leader of the Mordomian Empire. In reality, Darkon is no more real than Tolkein’s Mordor or Camelot of Arthurian legend, but to the role-players featured in this endearing and unexpectedly poignant documentary from Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel, the embattled kingdom -- which lies somewhere outside of Baltimore -- is a place worth fighting for. And fight they do: Twice a month, elaborately costumed warriors divided into Darkon-ian countries with names like Moot and Albion, gather in public parks or school grounds and stage epic battles over imaginary hexameters of land in hopes of either gaining territory or simply holding on to what’s rightfully theirs. These fearsome warriors fight using padded swords, shields, arrows and sundry medieval armaments, and casualties are determined by a complex formula that takes into account the number of strikes, the type of weapon used and the kind of armor worn. Death can last anywhere from 12 minutes to 24-hours (if you’ve been assassinated), and speeches are made before and after the battle, often in the high-blown language found only in fantasy novels and sword-and-sorcery movies. Once a month, there’s a Darkon cook-out. In the other, not-so-important “real” world, Bannor of Laconia, who becomes the focus of Neel and Meyer’s film, is really a married, stay-at-home dad named Skip; Keldar, the imperialistic leader of Mordom whose power Bannor challenges is a shy guy named Kenyon whom his parents say found a way of interacting in the real world through role playing games like Darkon. Many will think there’s something fundamentally silly about grown adults devoting so much of preciousl time and energy to the kind of games children usually grown tired of once they pass puberty, but Neel and Meyer are careful to treat their subjects with the same amount of seriousness and respect with which the player-characters treat one another. For some, Darkon helps them deal with the discrepancies between the world as they find it, and the world as they think it should be, i.e. Darkon: One player named Andrew, aka Shapwin of Laconia, feels that all that was once noble in the world is gone, replaced by Wal-Marts and cookie-cutter strip malls. For others, like Skip, who claims he was squeezed out of the family business by an unscrupulous older brother, Darkon gives a sense of control of their destinies they don’t have in the real world. As Skip puts it, Darkon allows people who otherwise feel like victims, a chance to act like a hero. But for most, Darkon offers a twice-a-month opportunity to become the people they feel they are inside, people the outside world can’t always see.