Metropolis

This time, I would like to talk about a film that has fascinated me since my teenage years - Fritz Lang's ‘Metropolis’ (1927)!

Metropolis was a silent film from the German director Fritz Lang in 1927, and it is considered as one of the greatest sci-fi films in the history of cinema. The style encompassed German expressionism, which could also be seen as following a wider trend of Modernism in the early 20^th century.

The film is influential because it is extremely visual and visionary. Metropolis is an almost textbook example regarding German Expressionism. With cinematic artists like Lang. F. W. Murnau, G. W. Pabst, and Robert Wiene, German Expressionism would prove to be inspirations for the American and European crime films and Film Noirs of the 1940s. The artistic influences of expressionism were evident in the sound films, and Welles, Kubrick and Kurosawa were all influenced by this stylistic movement. Fritz Lang would eventually exile to America, and made a great Film Noir known as ‘The Big Heat’ in the 1950s.

The story ‘took place’ - is past tense even appropriate here? - in the ‘futuristic’ year 2026. It was about Freder, the son of an industrialist Fredersen, who owned a lot of industrial complexes in the future city Metropolis. Certainly, the workers were seen nothing more than slaves or cogs in the complex machines, and there were already discontented brewing among the workers. When a meeting with a worker known as Maria, followed by an untimely accident that has wounded a number of the workers as a result, Freder had an awakening of conscience and decided to help the workers to fight for the worker’s well-being. However, the situation was complicated by Rotwang, the inventor who also worked for Fredersen. Overcome by grief of the loss of his true love, Hel, who ironically married Fredersen and then died soon after, Rotwang decided to make a female robot as a replacement of Hel. Fredersen forced Rotwang to make the robot resemble that of Maria (henceforth the ‘false’ Maria), so that it could mislead the workers to think Maria as a spy for the industrial complex. Rotwang kidnapped the real Maria, and the false Maria started to stir up the emotions of the workers to revolt against Metropolis. The false Maria led the workers to destroy the machines, yet it led to a massive flooding in the worker's part of the city, and drowning some of the children that the adults have left behind. Would Freder and the real Maria save the day?

Fritz Lang has stated that he has got his inspirations from a visit to New York in the 1920s. While he was definitely in awe of the beauty of the tall buildings and modernized cityscapes, he seemed to also detect an undercurrent of danger behind these advanced architecture. What is also interesting to look is that the world of ‘Metropolis’ was not merely about new things – the futuristic setting was balanced or juxtaposed by Gothic architecture of the 19^th century, as a reminder that humanity could not detach from their past. This type of juxtaposition or retrograde culture can also be felt with any dystopian or cyberpunk films, such as Blade Runner and Akira.

Metropolis was a visionary film exploring the man-machine interaction, and this vision has clearly influenced many subsequent filmmakers. Stanley Kubrick was among one of these filmmakers, as he often explored the theme of man vs. machine in many of his greatest works. Both Lang and Kubrick were concerned with the inevitable mechanical dehumanization offered by these man-made systems and technologies. Indeed, the artistic movement of Modernism was about the drastic changes humanity had to face in the modern world: emergence of advanced technologies, mass production, and facile connection through transport systems. The modern world, while apparently promising better lives for its inhabitants, can lead to a sense of alienation unprecedented for the past and simpler lives. Kubrick, Antonioni and Malick are among some of the key filmmakers who have expressed similar concerns in their films.

The modernist cities could be frightening, but it was not because they had intimidating heights or advanced appearances. They were frightening because they were too ordered and rational. Just like in Kubrick's films, Lang’s future is perceived as planned, functional and performative. The issues of the future are planned out in detail through rational judgments, and everything, including the humans within the system, are seen as merely nuts and bolts and are assessed based on their instrumental applications. Lang and Kubrick wanted us to contemplate about such a possible future - one with a stunning, yet dangerous, mechanical beauty. While Lang, with his engagement in Expressionism, used high contrast lighting and unusual angles to bring out the tension between men and machines, Kubrick used every ordered composition, harsh lighting, sharp edges and lines, and cold colour tones to heighten the tension and the fundamental differences between humanity and his creations. 

The exploitation and dehumanization of workers; the treatment of other humans as instruments, were also themes that were explored in Metropolis. In Sergei M. Eisenstein’s silent classic ‘The Battleship Potemkin’, he adopted a different type artistic style - Russian montage – to address the same issue. The sailors on the battleship were treated by the lowest way possible. Both films culminated in revolts by the workers, and certainly had deep political meanings. That was why some detractors of Metropolis criticized the film as a celebration of communism, and I would not dwell into the political issues here.

Expressionism, much like surrealism, uses dream-like images to enhance the atmosphere. In Metropolis, Freder had a few hallucinations when encountering stressful situations, and that gave the whole film a dream-like feel, often a signature in many expressionistic films. In many silent films, a dream-like atmosphere often reinforced the visual power of the resulting work. From the expressionistic work like Wiene’s ‘Caligari’ and Murnau’s ‘Nosferatu’, even to Buster Keaton’s ‘Sherlock Jr.’, aspects of the dream element were often found. After all, it should not be too surprising that many pioneers of early cinema have stressed the dream-like nature of cinema at the beginning of the era.

It has been 90 years since the emergence of Lang’s nightmarish vision of ‘Metropolis’. Its imaginative impact still continues to shock and fascinate the later generations of film enthusiasts.

by Ed Law

8/9/2017

Film Analysis

The Shining

'Hereeeeeee's Johnny!!'

When I started to have the idea of writing about Stanley Kubrick's films, I knew that there is a certain point I have to write about 'The Shining' (1980). To put it simply, the presence of this film will likely attract a lot of attention given its cult status in pop culture. Here I am, planting the flag on the horizon of this memorable classic, a film that I intensely enjoy - and watch again, again and again...

‘The Shining’ is a special film to me, because it was the only Stanley Kubrick film I have ever watched in the cinema. My friend, ‘G.’, and I have watched a re-release of this film back in 2006, when the Broadway Cinematheque in Hong Kong was celebrating its 5th anniversary and therefore has organized a Stanley Kubrick film festival, in which it showed all the available Kubrick films. I remember that my friend had a great impression on this modern classic, and though I have already watched ‘The Shining’ a couple of times before this showing, the cinematic atmosphere, with the intense soundtrack system, created quite a memorable experience for such a thrilling film.

How about the other audience and critics when the film first came out in 1980? Well, rather shockingly, it was a huge disappointment. While the film made a decent result in the box office, the critical reviews were bad. Stephen King, whose novel the film was based on, had a legendary hatred on the film (and also Kubrick). The major reasons for these sentiments were actually quite similar to that for 'Eyes Wide Shut' - a justified over-expectation, the challenge of genre categorizations, and the slow pace. Many people at that time did NOT find ‘The Shining’ horrifying - because the film was shot in broad daylight and wide composition, and these characteristics defied all the grammatical rules for a traditional horror movie. And, many people felt the narrative of the story was rather slow and not intense enough, and especially for Shelley Duvall's character, Wendy Torrance, critics saw her performance from hateful to misogynistic.

I believe the above observations are totally valid, if you are making the above assumptions. Without these assumptions, I see 'The Shining' more as a thriller, a film that relies on slow-building suspense rather than cheap scares. To be honest, is it that surprising to see that Jack Nicholson's Jack Torrance will eventually go nuts at the end? I believe most audience will expect that to happen, and indeed want that to happen. It is the gradual deterioration of the man's psyche that makes the film thrilling. While I do not disagree that a dark and expressionistic atmosphere will make a film scarier, Kubrick's original approach makes the film more chilling. The deliberate cleanliness and brightness of the environment will certainly contrast the sudden appearance of the hidden demons and dark forces, and such a high contrast approach will certainly make the film more thrilling.

Like many of the Kubrick films, The Shining has evolved throughout the last 35 years and it has established a cult classic among many audience members. I would say 'The Shining' is likely to be his most popular and entertaining film, and it will certainly be the first Kubrick film to watch if anyone is fascinated by the director. The film signifies what that means to be Stanley Kubrick: perfectionism, obsession, discipline, a concern with performance, and the emphasis on visual. The Shining is an extremely visual film - the visual details are so plentiful that they could be more important than the rather banal and often heightened dialogues the characters said. Indeed, the reason why the film can have such an everlasting impression on the audience is because when they view them again and again, they will discover more and more insights from the film. Their commitment and curiosity as a careful observer will be rewarded. Numerous interpretations and fan theories have been proposed everywhere, and just reading these views can already be enjoyable.

‘The Shining’ has an intense impact on the subsequent films. When you see a cinematic composition very symmetrical, 2 doors next to each other, 2 twins standing hand in hand, the presence of a maze, a bartender in golden light, someone shouting 'Here's Johnny', and a few Pixar films like 'Toy Story', you can feel ‘The Shining’ 's influence. Ironically, some of the creators in Pixar turn out to be huge fans of 'The Shining', because while many Pixar films have thought-provoking themes regarding families, 'The Shining' is likely an un-family friendly film. The film seems to suggest that domestic life is bloody hell –with blood being guaranteed in the film.

‘The Shining’ is a film about performance. Kubrick has become infamous among actors when it came to the production of ‘The Shining’, because he has asked for a large number of takes from the actors, even in some mundane scenes. While one can easily attribute this to a sort of self-indulgent obsession or egomaniac perfectionism, many viewers believe that this strategy is deliberate. It makes sense if Kubrick was seeing the actors as an instrument (bear with me, I do not mean to be offensive), or more appropriately, a function of the film. I am not saying that Kubrick was dehumanizing his actors – because in the design of the film Kubrick has not really intended to make ‘psychologically realistic’ characters, those you will expect to see in the real world. It is more appropriate to see these characters as archetypes, or ideas released in human forms. Kubrick was wise enough to understand the repeating demands for more takes will generate an anxiety from the actors – because, as they are humans they will perceive they are not fulfilling Kubrick’s requirement. So, they will try to explore a whole spectrum of possibilities for their performance. They can tighten up, act in a more stylized way, and contradict their own interpretations of the film. True, you can argue it is not fair for the actors, because in a human-centered point of view, you are undermining the creative contributions the actor may be investing into their roles, and Kubrick is like treating them as tools rather than artists. Yet, I feel that it makes sense if the style of a film is detached, and of course not anyone may identify with this style –hence the detractors of Kubrick films. Nevertheless, the actors in the film have all given really memorable performance, and I believe a lot of audience members can come to identify with this over the years.

This aspect of the film leads us to a minor, yet significant criticism by a number of critics and the members of audience. They complained that the film was ‘non-psychological’ or not psychologically realistic. The reason for these people’s disappointment originated from the preference that Kubrick did not provide any conclusive – especially psychological - reasons why Jack Torrance has gone crazy. Kubrick did not provide any information regarding Jack’s conditions through his quotes – they were basically all rants and banal statements that made not much sense. Furthermore, Kubrick did not provide even a narrative how Jack would have reached this type of psychological condition – like some previous traumatic events for example. In Stephen King’s original conception, King at least has attributed Jack’s situation to alcoholism. For a more traditional approach of American cinema, psychological realism is a requirement for a story with a clear narrative – even an evil character has to be made clear what his motivations for doing something bad are. It seems not to be the case in ‘The Shining’, a film about an American family from an American director.

Many critics, by contrast, believed that these preferences were deliberate by Kubrick, because as I have stated above, he had no intention to base the film on psychological realism. Kubrick wanted to present Jack as a psychologically hollow man, a bit like the psychopathic samurai in ‘The Sword of Doom’, where the filmmakers in both of these films did not intend to explicitly explain why the characters behaved in such a way. The philosopher Deleuze said that Kubrick was being more of a ‘symptomatologist’ here – he was showing the symptoms and expressions of Jack Torrance's craziness. Of course, there certainly existed some reasons or processes that would lead to Jack's situation, yet Kubrick chose to communicate these reasons indirectly through the images, rather than expressing them directly in words.

Therefore, ‘The Shining’ is very much like ‘2001’, where a number of perspectives are possible to make sense of the film. This approach of ‘anti-realism’ should not be seen as negative without careful consideration, because Kubrick 's concern in his later films was often about the way how characters performed as a function - much like a pawn piece on a chessboard  - in a given environment and how the character would interact with the environment. He was also concerned with how these resulting interactions (in this case, Jack's apparent possession by the Overlook Hotel) would impact the other characters and the surroundings. Thus, there was not a requirement to guarantee the portrayal of a psychological interpretable character in this case, because it was the interaction rather than inner-psychology that mattered. Certainly, some viewers might find it difficult to accept this approach and saw it as a weakness on Kubrick’s part. Yet, this detached approach can be a powerful one when the concerns of the story are on bigger ideas, including the more allegorical, abstract ... and timeless ones.

by Ed Law

2/9/2017

Film Analysis