A friend mentioned having just watched Metropolis, and out of curiosity I looked it up on Netflix. Surprise - it turned out to be available for instant viewing, and I have just finished this movie!
A German masterpiece from late 1920's, Metropolis is perfectly covering everything we have been talking in class throughout the semester. Extremely symbolic, it touches upon slavery and suppressing one's personality through strict control and regulations, about segregation and discrimination, about social layers or classes, above love and haterid, and about a human life in the world powered by machines.
2 hours of silent black and white (anti?)-utopia tells us a story of segregated, layered society in 2026, the post-industrial era. The children of special Fathers of Metropolis live on the Earth's face, in paradise, surrounded exclusively by beauty and fruit of life; while, separated from the special people by the layer of sophisticated machinery, deep underneath the Earth's surface live the workers, who service the Upper city. The film makes obvious the fact, that the segregation and discrimination are rooted from the superficial natures and exclusively functional attitudes of the wealthy to the workers ("I have created a machine in the image of man, that never tires or makes a mistake. Now we have no further use for living workers." (Ratwang, the cooky scientist working for the wealthy)). Another unforgettable character in the movie - Maria, the profit of the workers. She draws an interesting paralel with Babel tower: "Let us build a tower, whose summit will touch the skies, and on it we will inscribe: "Great is the world and it's creator. And great is Man". But those who had conceived the idea of this tower could not build it themselves, so they hired thousands of others to build for them".) I love how in simple phrases expressed is a really great idea of co-dependence between classes, is shown how rich depend on the poor more then on the contrary, as the rich can not DO things! :)
Well, i am highly recommending to watch this movie to all of my classmates! I forgot what it is to spend a couple hours without words (silent). Beautiful orchestra, incredible actor play (when actor does not use the language to convey the message, his/her face and body have to justify and express more), great photography and a beautiful, powerful message: "The mediator between brain and muscle must be the heart" (Thea Von Harbon). The way i understand it is that the mother of both idea and action should be pure love <3<3<3
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