City on bones

There is an opinion that in our time everything is a remix; this even has a great film on Youtube. Everyone copies and modifies the existing material - and this is not bad in itself, this is reality. For many works, we can trace approximate sources. Metropolis is the founder of a whole pleiad of films that tell of the deplorable coexistence, and then of the opposition of various social strata: servants, just small people with celestials, with those they serve. And if this idea is too general and previously played out in the literature, then this film we can consider a kind of cinematic source, at least the most significant, if we argue about any first-priority. We see a practically verbatim paraphrase in the Matrix, in the Hunger Games, in Time, in Snow Through, in Elysium, in the recent Vysotka, and their ilk. And if Metropolis was inspired by the nighttime New York, it can be assumed that Gotham was inspired by the Metropolis; and the Metropolis in which Superman operated was in general a direct copy of the 1927 Metropolis. In the whole heap of films, we can also meet the composition structure of Metropolis, the inherent components of which are the passionate restrained part of society, a certain chosen one, his beloved, the mystical prophecy, the special role and meaning of love, and the logical outcome of insurrection and revolution.

But we will depart from the search for the results of the influence of Metropolis to the film itself. It shows the device of everyday life of people in a high-tech city, which is literally divided into two bipolar social classes - the inhabitants of the Depth, under the ground servicing cars for the life support of the upper city, and, in fact, the inhabitants of the upper city - the elite. Workers here are identified with prisoners - faceless, disenfranchised, marching with low-lowered heads from the grate to the grate, whose traffic is strictly controlled by traffic lights - even cars that are completely dependent on these conditional prisoners have more power over them. But the prisoners are not quite right here, and they will not fail to remind us of this, naturally comparing convicts with slaves. These people do not have the right to sadness and, in general, to their own feelings - even death itself is no more than routine, than the failure of worn out parts that have worked out their time, which will be replaced in the blink of an eye. No wonder the film begins with a demonstration of the work of various mechanisms and rotation gears, pointing us to the place of the person in the lower city. Even the time of calculation here has passed to the 10-hour dial, counting the beginning and end of the shift. But life in such a rhythm exhausts all the human resources - by the way, it seems that the workers look oppressed for this reason, and not because of totalitarian governmental pressure. In general, it is worth mentioning that in many respects (by today's standards) the film is quite artless; the totalitarian system itself is not totally totalitarian, and we see this on the screen repeatedly.

The inhabitants of the upper city benefit from "falling from the sky", as well as leaflets advertising services, inherent in the empty, idle way of life of its inhabitants. Of course, under such conditions, social tension grows, reaches its limit and as a result, an explosion occurs. There is nothing new and unusual here, and Metropolis is a fairly universal story about the struggle of the exploited with the exploiters for power and justice. And since we were convinced above that this topic is still very topical, we can call Fritz Lang a real visionary from the cinema, anticipating the creativity of descendants for generations ahead. And what can we say about the distant descendants, if we see the repetition of many details of the film in the dictatorship of the Third Reich that soon established itself. One of Hitler's favorite films more than a decade before the tragic events predicts and experiments, and prisoners of concentration camps, and gas chambers, and strict ornamental artwork, composed of human bodies. In general, the visual component of the film should pay special attention.
There is no deep philosophy in the film about the irrational nature of the riot, its spontaneous and contradictory specifics, the nature of its unpredictable consequences. So if the story told in "Metropolis" can be called typical and uncomplicated, then these epithets definitely will not suit the description of the local video series, since it is truly outstanding and, perhaps, anticipating the time - after all, this unique film of interest in the viewer of those years did not call. The plot here is of secondary importance and inferior to the importance of the technique itself for depicting the events that are taking place. The film was applied innovative special effects, made with extreme technical scrupulousness, although for the development of the plot is not required. A brilliant episode of the creation of the robot, the Tower of Babel, fantastic machines, 36 thousand people extras - the special effects here are valuable and only tell us about Lang's inclination to pompous ornamentation. But if in the Nibelungs it had a mythical meaning, then here it is an end in itself. The visual side in Metropolis has become dominant, and the confused plot conflicts are not so important. The actors themselves here - by the way, perfectly fulfill their roles in full accordance with the preset conventions of silent cinema - only parts, live "motifs" of the entire scale decorative composition. As well as orchestral music, designed here only to help the viewer to strengthen and clarify the emotions caused by the "picture" - for example, remember the disturbing, truly blood-cooling motifs at the end of Prelude.

Metropolis is the most costly film of its era, like two films, two of its mentally similar followers who chose the path of sophisticated and meticulous cinematic artistic techniques: Kubrick's Space Odyssey and Cameron's Avatar. This film, with detailed plans of a fantastic city, seemed to be designed for us - people living in a modern technocratic society. On people who have become in fact a part, an appendage of the machine world. "Metropolis" was included by UNESCO in the list of the highest achievements of mankind, it largely determined the development of modern Hollywood and in general commercial film production with its special effects. And any person interested in cinema, must see this grandiose architectural monument from the cinema.

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