Metropolis review

Metropolis review (1927)

A fiction world brought to life!

This is undoubtedly an interesting movie with a clear understanding of the three act structure, character tropes and gorgeous soundtrack that plays through the beginning to the end.

The story starts off in a futuristic utopian city where a set of people was divvied into two different class. The wealthy city planners who works above the surface of their city and the working class are the people who do manual labor underground to power up the city. One of those wealthy class Freder spots a beautiful women with a group of children. She ended up disappearing where the young man tries to find her only to discover the realistic horror of the underground life which causes the city above to functioning. He went to plead with his father, the creator of the city, to let them go however he refused. As a response he took over one of the worker's life and continued to experience the hardship and learns of Maria, the beautiful women he saw before, and ends up joining them for their quest for freedom. During the meantime the creator of the utopian city visits an old friend the inventor who created a robot which he plans bring the creator's wife back from the dead. The creator had a different idea, he asked to capture Maria and use her as a tool for the robot and cause her to sin so that her encouraging words would be discarded. The inventor agrees and does just that. After a while of ordering Maria-robot to sin the lower class becomes angry and that an attack to the city above is the only way to solve it, only to realise that they forgot their children and the city below starts to flood. Freder saves Maria and together end up bringing the children up to safety and putting a stop to the inventor's plans. The father saw the horrific battle and understands that what he done wrong and aims to correct that.

The story clearly escalate from a lovely romance story into end of the world movie. This movie obviously wants to be recognised to look visually appealing and unforgettable by taking the next leap forward from the other previous films by having unique design and style of the buildings. A great deal of care and love went into making this film and you can obviously tell that by watching the actors try to do their best to portray emotions and body movements into their characters however at some points it's almost too funny and that you can't take this movie too seriously in which they wanted you to.

Maria is probably the worst point in this movie as she just turns everything from all seriousness to goofy and cheesy in a mater of seconds however with that being said she isn't completely bad as during the ending where the Maria-robot is taking over the city's surface she does her best to separate the two different characters so it's easier for the audience to figure out which one is which by looking at her body language and facial expressions but sadly goofy is still goofy no matter how much they try to sugar-coat it.

 

Overall this movie gets a 7.6/10. It was very well paced compare to the "Das cabinet des Dr Caligari" movie and we do get to see the main protagonist undergoes few obstacles and changes that makes him an identifiable character. This movie was clever to show every character's point of view and ideals so the audience can understand why they are doing what they are doing. Sadly the iconic robot was only seen around eight minutes and the movie could of been a little more interesting if the robot had more scenes resulting in an ending between the robot and a Freder. The soundtrack, visuals and story are all fun and enjoyable to experience and highly recommended even if you are not the general target audience.

"Devoted film- and music-lovers alike will enjoy the latest reconstruction (images and sound) of Fritz Lang's truly marvelous tale of mediation over violence." - S. James Wegg
(http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1013775-metropolis/)

"The newly restored footage enhances sci-fi's first masterpiece, making this essential viewing for any movie lover." - Kim Newman
(http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/reviewcomplete.asp?FID=136955)

“Metropolis” does what many great films do, creating a time, place and characters so striking that they become part of our arsenal of images for imagining the world. The ideas of “Metropolis” have been so often absorbed into popular culture that its horrific future city is almost a given" - Roger Ebert
(http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-metropolis-1927)