Part 8: Metropolis
Release: 1927
Director: Fritz Lang

Many filmmakers try and make a message when it comes to their work. They can have characters feel like certain politcal figures, a setting that is reminiscent of real life settings, or just have an overall message of what's going on around the world today. To truly have a classic film, it not only has to make a message about it's current timeframe; but for even what might happen in the future. Watching Metropolis again brought back an interesting thought. Sure this is all making political messages to the state of Germany at the time (a big country of financial crisis before the Nazi's came into power) but also it feels very current to the political problems that face America today.

Not to bore anyone to tears about my political feelings, but some things in this film made me think of the financial crisis's were facing today. The film is mainly about a worker vs rich society and how unfair the rich society has over the workers. The workers literally have to do labor until they die and it's all just to make the "better" society be more wealthy. The workers want to revolt, but their leader Maria (Brigitte Helm) decides they shouldn't yet until their savior arrives. Eventually the rich society decides to kidnap Maria and use a maschinenmensch (aka cyborg) to take her appearence to rebel any rebellion. Let's just say it all goes to hell once this Maria robot starts to run around the city.

Again this film has some parallels to some of the problems were having as a society right now. Keep in mind that this is all pretty much people against the current German rulers of the time, and considering who their next rulers would be; I bet they would love to have this politcal landscape again. But all the stuff when it comes to the workers vs the rich is basically what is happening in this country right now. We are starting to rebel against the "better" society and our president is trying to get the rich to sorta give back more to the society. Then we have the scapegoat of the robot Maria, and while she is used to stop the a rebellion, the robot ironically starts it. How many times in our country, threw out the ages, has the government try to either rebel a situation or distract us from the problems? Sometimes it doesn't work and sometimes it does. Also think about the events that are distracting us from current (and huge) political events? Thanks to the sudden death of Michael Jackson I bet most people don't realize North Korea is threatening to strike at us with nuclear weapons.

Lets get this political stuff out of the way and state what is truly amazing about this film. The special effects. Oh man how great the special effects are for this film. So ahead of it's time when it comes to some aspects of the film. Like when the robot is changing into Maria; that is just a beautiful peice of craft right there. Also a lot of great use of backgrounds and sets; like when we have a whole crowd of rebellious workers advance on Maria. Or how about the Tower of Babel referencing in the background? Best painted backgrounds for a film in my eyes. It's also very ahead of it's time when it comes to robotics. I mean were in an age where people were still grasping the idea of what a robot is and it was mostly used for science fiction. But what Lang shows on screen is very true with how robots are made today. Well minus the use of golden rings to create synthetic skin.

One thing to keep in mind with this film is that there are many different versions or copies of this. It's available on DVD but because the U.S. lost the copyright to it, it's very hard to find a true version of this. Now whether you want to see a film an extra hour longer (the true copy is three hours while a normal copy is two hours) is up to you. But if you do try and find the film try and look for a group called 'The F.W. Murnau Foundation' which has the most updated and restored version of this classic.

I love this film you can't even know how much I love it. It's a bonafide classic in terms of science fiction and poltical thriller. It's as current now as it was over eighty two years ago. I say you should try and find the best version of this film as best as you can. If you can't then I still say you'll enjoy one of the most 'ahead of it's time' film in your lifetime.

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