Metropolis — Nuts in a Good Way

 

I watched this 1927  silent film as part of my 2021 Book and Movie Challenge. I knew it was really influential. I knew it was a big story set in 2026 about the downtrodden workers under the city and the rich people living in a futuristic city of splendor. This made it seem as if it would be preachy and boring, although with gorgeous sets.

Forget all that. This movie was nuts. And I mean that in a good way.

Let's start with a sexy female robot, mad scientist, forbidden love, a rooftop chase with fistfight, a horrifying chase of the heroine through the catacombs, and a really effective double role for Brigitte Helm playing both the heroine and the evil robot. All set off with amazing style in which I could see influences for Frankenstein movies, Bladerunner, Star Wars, and a ton of other movies. All the times I'd read about this movie no one said it was science fiction. I was actually on the edge of my seat at times wondering where this crazy story would go next.

I was really surprised also to see a lot of religious symbolism throughout. This begins when the hero leaves his world to see what lies below and has a vision of the workers being fed to the demon Moloch. Numerous references to the Apocalypse, complete with Biblical readings, are accompanied by Dies Irae  music to carry the theme home. Crosses, the seven deadly sins, the Tower of Babel, a flood, and the importance of the coming of "the Mediator" are just a few of the other things rounding out the religious references.

There aren't tons of title cards telling us the dialogue but we usually know what everyone's talking about. As Norma Desmond said in Sunset Blvd., "We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!" Sometimes the acting is way over the top which is understandable since a lot of these actors came from theater where you've got to go big to reach the back rows. However, there was surprisingly subtle acting sometimes where closeups allowed. 

 In many ways I was aided by many years of watching indie or foreign movies where you learn to just let them wash over you in the hopes of the big reward by the end. And, I was helped by our Indian movie watching where you learn you won't catch every line or reference but you'll get most of it by the end. Also, Bollywood has trained me to be very tolerant of "big" acting.

As you can probably tell from what I've said, this isn't what you'd call a subtle movie but it is amazingly effective at being both entertaining and getting the point across.