~ short review-essay on Metropolis (1927).
[Opening Line] “Shift change!”
~ The materialism x spiritualism of class struggle depicted with silent personas, pulsing orchestrations, and expressive imagery. An allegory for the modern world, layered inside of visionary sci-fi, made 94 years ago and just as relevant today…
Parasitic city planners live in opulence, in the sky, at peak of the Tower of Babel; apocalyptic conditions for the laborers under the earth, in the death grip of the Molochian machines that they run to build everything. The people — who are a whole character in this film — need something to believe in — a Messiah — in the midst of a technologically dominated world that they *let* rule them simply by continuing to *do their jobs.* They choose to worship Maria, a mother, educator, organizer. One of them. But also, a prophet, who envisions a better world and speaks of eventual peaceful meditation between the hands and head of the world…
The inevitable revolution is complicated by a Machine made by mad scientist technocrat and Dragon to the planners’ will no longer, Rotwang.
It is made out a vengeance to all, a superpowered Android, soon symbolizing Rotwang’s dead muse, that channels the worker’s rage with plots of violence and draws the eye of the planners’ Sons with the possibility for blissful ignorance, endless partying.
The awakened Machine sows dissent, chaos and madness throughout Metropolis, among both its under- and over-classes. (The A.I. seeks to destroy humanity.)
Machine-Maria, a false Messiah to the poor, seeks to march them to the heart of Metropolis’ industry — the Heart Machine — to kill it, the thing that killed so many of their brothers… / Machine-Maria, a false idol to the rich, becomes a hyperobject of ultimate desire to the city planners, gyrating in their private bacchanalia, blasting their minds’ eyes with the possibility of an endlessness to their decadence, promising them even more sex and power to go with their already unrestrained hedonism.
While the rulers dream and orgy, the people move en masse to carry out the Maschinenmensch’s mad will, Machine on Machine violence, in the process abandoning their own children to die in the resulting flood.
The Machine Man: [disguised as Maria] “Who is the living food for the machines in Metropolis — ? Who lubricates the machine joints with their own blood — ? Who feeds the machines with their own flesh — ? Let the machines starve, you fools — ! Let them die — ! Kill them — the machines — ! … Women and men, let no one miss today — ! Death to the machines — !”
The manipulated workers, in despair at their failed, self-destructive revolution, capture and burn the Machine-Maria at the stake, out of vengeance for her false proclamations of glory for them. But their rapturous delight at the ritual sacrifice is snuffed when they see she is steel and didn’t feel anything, was never alive.
In the middle of all the crisis, Freder Fredersen, the ruler’s son, the true Messiah {heart} of this story , helps the Real Maria, his beloved, save the children from the flood, then saves her from disassociating Rotwang, and saves the world by becoming the mediator between comrade Grot, paragon of the hands of the world (the workers, the underclass) and father Joh, representative of the head of the world (the city planners, the ruling class).
~ THE MEDIATOR BETWEEN THE HANDS AND THE HEAD MUST BE THE HEART. ~
~ Was Fritz Lang, the “Master of Darkness”, trying to save the world with his film? 1927, in between World Wars, with worker’s movements on the rise and the economy soon to collapse… The core message of Metropolis was an answer to the crisis of the world’s faltering social organization at the time, roaring capitalism gone rampant, ready to bust with global depression and bloodshed: *Synthesizing* class consciousness, from the bottom up.
Violent revolution *may* be averted with heartfelt mediation between dying workers and parasitic “rulers” — through the development of a more rational, egalitarian distribution of industrial hyper-capitalism’s surplus as a result. What could have been…
At any rate, an all-time film.
