Metropolis

Metropolis is an expressionist futuristic film from 1927. Personally, the movie is very interesting when comparing the depiction of urbanism in the film to the real city life nowadays. Time, machines and human souls are perhaps the main key word in the movie. Working scenes are usually portrayed in a fast, rapid atmosphere where there is often a time motif represented by a clock ticking. Machines are illustrated in a gigantic and scary image. The workers in the scenes look so little when compared to the machine creating a feeling of being taken over and becoming parts of the machine instead of being its controllers.

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There is a clear separation between the rich and poor almost like a utopian world verses a dystopian world. The rich living above the ground have a full satisfying life in terms of materialism and possessions. The poor live under the ground in a very bad condition, treated like parts of the machine. They are in deed the slavery of time and machinery, well maybe physically, however have lives with hope. When talking about soul, even though, the machine dehumanizes the workers; they have their soul and faith up for the religious based story that Maria tells them. The rich in the opposite manner is almost heartless. Father Joh is perhaps a representative of the future person. With absolute power, he doesn’t care about anyone’s life and his relationship between him and his son is depicted poorly too. The son, Frederic is probably the representation of us with caring heart. Not only he connects the plot together and walks us the story, he draws attention, engaging us into the film, Without him it’d be like watching the two extreme worlds of the rich and the poor. The movie perhaps gives us a second thought of being the ones that should help changing what is coming.

To look back in the story, I see some correlations between the clear class separations and the rise of the average man theory in 1840s. The theory suggests that industrial and capitalist society is changing and transforming who you really are and makes you become modules. The man versus machine becomes a controversy. The poor in the film as mentioned were dehumanized. They only work and that’s why they seem so soul-less. They actually become units and nothing else. They dress the same, walk the same and have a particular job they have to do. Maybe this is a negative feedback on the idea of everyone being equal also (modernism idea). The father, though is a controller, is under controlled by the machine and capitalism. He loses his role of being a father. I interpret that his absolute power depicts the threat of the colonial countries/ WWI winners. Bourgeois and non-bourgeois can also be noticed. The father being the bourgeois owns the mean of the production.

http://blog.timesunion.com/marshall/files/2010/09/metropolis01.jpg

Comparing to today, cutting the fact that the film is portrayed in an extreme sense, there is a connect link to many recent issues. Human are as expected a slavery of time and machine. Everything is rapid and fast. People revolves around the time, are told what to do by the clock instead of controlling it. One thing that is still far from the depiction is the definite barrier between the rich and the poor. Though the edge is still blurry, we are seeing that it’s coming. Maybe not in the small scale or as detail as the movie but in the bigger global picture, there are powers in rich countries. Bourgeois are living up high and the poor can only afford habitation down low.

For other points, there is an interesting futuristic cityscape of high-rise buildings and transportations. The buildings have simple geometric shapes. No trees. Still portraying the rush hour in city life, which is also seen today, his cityscape reminds me of the Radiant city of steel, pate glass and reinforced concrete. However it didn’t show the clear idea of housing being assigned by family size.

http://bluecrabboulevard.com/2007/10/30/welcome-to-metropolis/

One last theme that interests me on the movie is the idea of the dead, the living and eternity. The idea is presented in any different ways, questioning about what is actually dead and what is actually alive. If the living is the soul then there is no living man in the city. The rich lose their soul for capitalism and the poor lose their soul to the machine but they are still alive. Joh’s wife is dead in his mind but not in Rotwang’s and his wife becomes alive again but in a dead form that can live for eternity. The nature becomes eternal in this film by he name given for the gardens. And Frederic is questioning his father about the work shift. He wonders if there is no ending for his satisfaction.

From Bauhaus to our house

The rise of modern architecture perhaps can be seen that it is the direct effect from the political and social point of view. As German at that time was crushed from the war and was humiliated from winners, the country itself and its people, in the state of a loser, possibly have to find some where in a stand point to grab. This means to become a socialist and anti-bourgeois. The suffocation from the collapse of economy and inflation, together with the ruins from the war brought the country down to the ground. This was probably the moment when the saying ‘start from the zero’ came about and Gropius was smart enough to take a hold of it.

The building Worker House, claimed to be ‘the new architecture for the workers’, ‘the perfect worker housing’ has a gold of rejecting ‘all things bourgeois’ (pg.17). Gropius and other architects such as Mies van der Rohe and J.J.P Oud as leaders were supported by Social Democrats in both Germany and Holland. In favor of the government who was trying to create a socialist society of equality and brotherhood, the building probably was well advertised. This could be one of the factors why Gropius and his crew were so successful at redefining beauty in architecture. The question is –

With all the support of the high authority and with the very few eyes of the young architects who were eager to re-create the world, what is beauty? And what exactly is non-bourgeois when the messengers of the non-bourgeois are not really the non-bourgeois?

The beauty in this case is a result from the intellectual fashion and the right moment to be born. Due to the political and social attachment, it can just be a pure political tool, an art of controlling or a depiction, an adaptation or a rebel after the lost –‘We’re independent of the bourgeois society around us!’ (pg.18).

From the book, the beauty is also used in relation to one of the non-bourgeois theory of using honest materials for they are what they are. Gropius finds purity and beauty of architecture in the honesty in the use of materials. For him the structure needs to be expressed. This means to strip the outer skin, the ornamental façade of buildings to show their bones or to leave them bare skin and say good-bye false facades so people can know that it’s the steel or metal or concrete they are using. As the definition of beauty is various depend on people’s perspectives, Gropius building, like the Worker Housing, which he and his crew really appreciate, can possibly be nothing far from a peeled apple that is left on a table for the workers.

The beauty can actually be an odd as the idea was so new and simple that it became strikingly remarkable for viewers.

Criticizing on the meaning of the non-bourgeois, based on the book, it is odd to learn that the Worker House which was built to be ‘the perfect work housing’ was complaint by the workers and the architects’ response were to reply ‘ they had to be reeducate’. This raised a question of what is the real meaning of non-bourgeois and whom it is for as the establisher of this idea have decent salary, were well educated and are not ‘intellectually undeveloped’ (pg. 32).

"Uncontrolled Vocabularies » Blog Archive » Tom Wolfe’s From Bauhaus To Our House."Uncontrolled Vocabularies. Web. 23 Jan. 2011. .

"May 18." Steve's Pages. Web. 23 Jan. 2011. .