Review: Metropolis

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It turns out that Fritz Lang’s 1927 vision of the future wasn’t too far from our current reality in the seminal silent classic Metropolis. The Abu Dhabi Film Festival screening included a new cut of the film that pieces together the story in its intended way, never before seen since studios cut Lang’s original in the 1920’s.

This is a film of films. And I say that without a breath of hyperbole, the classic (and first) science fiction film that is as layered and intricate as any film that’s been produced in the modern age. It’s the stated inspiration of Ridley Scott (Blade Runner) and George Lucas (Star Wars).

Metropolis presents the audience with a vision of a dystopian society, somewhere in the future, where the workers controlling ‘the machine’ live and work underground, while the bourgeois live above ground in towers and use elevated roadways to transit.

With one man controlling the city and the ‘machine’, the wealthy industrialist Joh Friedersen, who works in the Tower of Babel, observes his vast empire from above. His son, Freder, while frolicking in the Eternal Gardens (essentially a playground of the elite) sets eyes on Maria, who has come from the Workers City, deep in the city’s catacombs. It is on his search that he sees a fatal accident at the machines of the workers, coming to the realization that decadence of the ruling class is at the cost of the workers.

Based on his revelations to his father, Joh visits the inventor Rotwang, who has created a cyborg based on a mutual love known only as ‘Hel’. Joh instructs Rotwang to give it Maria’s likeness in order to head off a perceived uprising from the underground Worker’s City. In the ensuing scenes, the cyborg encourages the destruction of the machines (with Rotwang double-crossing Joh Friedersen) and chaos ensues.

This is a high-order Orwellian dystopia before Orwell had penned Nineteen Eighty Four in 1949, presenting a bleak, flawed but ultimately not too-far-off-the-mark vision of the future. The image of the city, alienation and a the meaning of place are all delicately explored in this film, and the missing footage helps fill the gaps tremendously in the story.

We’re not going to give this a rating – it doesn’t need one. Watch it, enjoy it with patience and like us, you’ll be wondering “how the hell did they do these effects in 1927?”.

METROPOLIS_TRAILER

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