Metropolis 1927

[9.2/10] Metropolis shouldn’t be as resonant as it is. It shouldn’t be as awe-inspiring as it is. It shouldn’t be as heart-wrenching and harrowing as it is. With nearly a century of distance, the ideas should seem quaint, the visions rudimentary, the emotions unavailing.

And yet, somehow, across the tides of time and culture, Metropolis remains a marvel of the cinema. A fever dream of metal and light, a parable of man and machine, a vision of overwhelming horror and splendor in turn -- the film manages to cut through the years, and reach right to the heart.

Perhaps that begins with the sad truths that have perpetuated from pre-Great Depression industrial rigor to a future not alike but not so dissimilar from the one imagined by director Fritz Lang and co-writer Thea von Harbou. Like so much in the film, the world of Metropolis is one of extremes and metaphors. The poor labor in regimented squalor underground. The wealthy play and idle above in splendid finery. The imagery is heavy-handed, and yet unwaveringly potent, of much and squalor to those consigned to the land down below, while their social betters crunch numbers or while away the hours in comfort and security above. The simplicity of the premise, and the inequality it brings to life in exaggerated, but that much more vivid terms, gives it power across eras.

It’s those illustrations of the wonders and sins of the titular megacity that drive these ideas home and remain a wondrous achievement even now. Lang and his collaborators turn the city itself into an elegant yet horrible machine, full of cogs and gears, where the rhythm of elevators and cranks and levers accrue to flashing lights, rolling cars, and even the bedraggled people forced to keep it moving on its steady regiment. There is a constant sense of movement to the film, where nothing in this city can stop, lest it, or they, be gobbled up by the machines that sleep not for a moment.

Therein lies the terror of the piece. In an early segment, Freder, the son of the city’s master, witnesses the monstrous clatter of the machines that provide his largesse, and is aghast at the human cost. The thundering contraption turns into Moloch, as lost soul after lost soul is ushered into its gaping, mechanical maw. Metropolis evinces a plain fear of industry, technology, and notions of the mechanized future at the dawn of the modern age. These larger-than-life abstractions and hallucinations drive that anxiety home better than anything.

Near the midpoint of the film, Freder’s love, Maria, a sainted figure of inspiration to the workers below, is duplicated via robot and sent to stir the passions of aristocrat and pleb alike. What results is a phantasmagoria, rapid-cut images of tantalizing hedonism and calls to violence, sketched out as a modern Whore of Babylon, the purity of flesh corrupted by electricity and steel. The iconography Lang channels creates an operatic tone for his piece, one that sees the celluloid as a battleground for ideas that still provoke on a visceral level with the fullness of time.

And yet, beyond the grand notion of the evils of the city fathers being alienated from the plight of the people on whose labor they depend, or of industrialization as a demonic corrupting force, or even the fantastical images Lang and his team conjure, this is also a personal story. Brought to the fore amid such grave revelations and constant tumult is a tale of individual epiphany, rivalry, and love.

Freder falls in love with Maria, who opens his eyes to the cruel excesses upon which his life depends. He’s aghast at his father, Joh Frederson, who not only knew about such trespasses, but believes they’re just and proper. Frederson has both a partnership and a rivalry with Rotwang, an inventor, as both of them pine for Hel: Frederson’s wife, Freder’s mother, and Rotwang’s lost love. Frederson dismisses his assistant Josaphat, leaving him crestfallen in his distress, but forging a friendship between him and Freder as they recoil from the indifference and caprice of the man who runs Metropolis.

The events of the film -- clandestine revivals, a worker’s revolt, a city on the brink of collapse -- are not abstract events, but rather channeled through the relationships and reactions of these main players. The cast more than rises to that challenge. Heightened performances match the tone of the film, but Freder is volcanic as a blind child turned penitent believer once he witnesses the atrocities that buttress his pleasures; Frederer cuts the perfect image of the cold steady man at the head of a cold steady berg; and Maria is the lightning bolt that runs through the city, mesmerizing in her looks and rapturous in her gesticulations.

The acting should be the toughest thing to translate across the ages. Instead, the high volume emotions are as affecting and arresting as they were in 1927, rooted in personal, relatable reactions to the events that are universal in the feelings they convey. At times, in the broader ambit of the story, the characters are avatars for callousness or compassion. But in the moment, they are human beings, shocked or touched by one another’s gestures, enraptured by someone they love spurring courage and devotion, grateful when those they care about turn up safe and sound despite the perils that abound above and below.

Or maybe they’re just rightfully terrified. Lang and his collaborators dream up any number of fantastical monstrosities in the heightened reality and picture box world they craft. But they also find much more quotidian means to chill the blood, with no less cinematic flair.

Rotwang’s pursuit of Maria through the catacombs, and eventually into his lair, is scary as all hell. The simple use of lightness and dark, to signify the few spaces left to hide and a lurking, advancing evil in rigorous pursuit, creates a tension that doesn’t go away until the spider catches his prey. What fills the space is, instead, the paroxysms of someone cornered and desperate, in the clutches of a madman, about to succumb to his haunting violations.

Even then, the most petrifying thing in the film may be Frederson’s henchman, credited only as The Thin Man, who stalks Freder and his associates through the middle portion of the film. He lacks even the tricks of light and sound that suffuse Rotwang’s chase. Instead, it’s his mere presence, with a disturbing look, unflinching air, and inhuman gait that make him the scariest specter on the screen. He does little that is explosive beyond grip a man’s hand, but his simplest gestures, coupled with an intimidating energy that stills every scene he’s in, unleashes the fear both on and in front of the screen.
Still, for being able to build such simple yet discomfiting moments, Lang’s Metropolis is an awe-inspiring exercise in scale. From the matte paintings and miniatures that communicate the scope of the titular metropolitan corpus, to the giant doors and other oversized approaches to set design that make the characters seem dwarfed in an environment much bigger than they are, to the legions of extras who show the lifeblood of the city pouring out of its buildings and into its causeways, the palpable sense of all that is teeming and immense runs through the picture.

The effects that Lang and company deploy to realize these incredible sequences stand the test of time. The iconic Machine Man is as transfixing as ever. The sequences where Maria’s visage is transferred onto her robotic counterpart carry the flash and zing of modern movie-making. And the climactic rendering of the “heart machine” and the ensuing flood of the lower levels is the peak of the film’s maximalist bent, with a heart-pumping race against time, rife with bravery and desperation. The confluence of special effects, makeup and costuming, and production design results in a unity of purpose that elevates all elements of the film.

For such a bleak beginning, a swath of villains, and a harrowing final act, though, there is ultimately something strangely hopeful about the trajectory of Metropolis. It is a story of over-industrialized, extreme and exploitative capitalism run amuck, with no shortage of examples of how such a system is reinforced by those whom it benefits and crushes those without under the bootheels of those who claim the fruits of their labor. But it is also a story of a young man who stands to gain from the status quo, seeing how wrong the machine that delivers his joys is, driven to remake it, and tear down the barriers that separate well-heeled men from their unseen cobblers.

He is the mediator, the much-ballyhooed “heart” who unites the “head” of men like his father who supervise the city, and the “hands” of the workers who run it. In him is the ardent optimism that there can be mutual understanding and care among these groups, in a world made to benefit both of them. In Maria, rests the belief that peaceful means can be used to restore the truth of universal brotherhood. There is something profoundly aspirational in that idea.

In one striking interlude, Lang brings one of Maria’s sermons to life, retelling the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. The lesson is plain, of man building too much and too high, until the bonds between people were cut and they could no longer communicate. The thrust of Metropolis is to restore those lines of communication, of faith and trust, until even those who would loom above and those who would toil below can again meet on the same same level, and see, hear, and understand one another.

With the film itself, Lang pulls off just such a feat. Differences in era and culture are their own Tower of Babel -- divisions that make it difficult, if not impossible, to consume and appreciate what may be vastly removed from your own experience. And yet, the truths Lang summons are so elemental, the images he creates so impressive, the emotions so universal, that when he and his collaborators speak across the ages, we sorry lot can still hear them too.