Where did all those dystopian narratives, from Huxley’s Brave New World to Orwell’s 1984, come from? Perhaps, it started in the Golden Twenties of the Weimar Republic, a period of expressionism, when Fritz Lang, an expressionist screenwriter, directed his renowned masterpiece: Metropolis. This groundbreaking film is set in a futuristic urban dystopia, paving the way for future exploration in its unique, unconventional genre. The narrative centers around the stark division between the working class confined underground to maintain the city's machinery and the wealthy elite living in skyscrapers above. Freder, the son of the city's master Joh Fredersen, becomes aware of the harsh conditions of the workers, joining Maria, a saintly figure to the workers, in the mission to promote peace and bridge the gap between the classes.

Meanwhile, Fredersen seeks to suppress such an uprising and hires a mad scientist, Rotwang, to create a robot resembling Maria to incite chaos among the workers. However, deceiving Fredersen, the robot was deliberately designed to cause the workers to revolt, as Rotwang sought revenge towards Fredersen and his city, causing widespread destruction. In the climax, Freder and the real Maria manage to stop the chaos, and the film concludes with a hopeful message of reconciliation between the classes: symbolized by a handshake between Fredersen and the workers' leader, mediated by Freder who said, “The mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart.”

The movie features exaggerated, stylized visuals and dramatic sets to convey the psychological states of the characters, a step closer to the contemporary film genre. Each character is an archetype of a theme; for example, the robot alludes to the notion of a false prophet and the theme of technological control-reiterated numerously in literary pieces of the 1900s. The dystopian society itself, concurrently, embodies a pervasive fear of industrialization: a microcosm of the world today.

Doubtlessly a seminal work in cinematic history, Metropolis surely is a masterpiece not only for its ambitious visual effects but also for its profound exploration of themes that resonate to this day.

이승빈 강남포스트 학생기자  webmaster@ignnews.kr

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