Released with almost no fanfare in the United States in 2002, Metropolis is one of the most hauntingly beautiful animated films of the past few years – the sort of film that American animation companies seem incapable of creating. Metropolis is also a fine example of how good Japanese animation can be when it resists the temptation to regurgitate clichés.
Loosely based upon the Fritz Lang silent film of the same name, Metropolis takes the viewer into a futuristic world in which society has been physically as well as economically stratified into several levels and humanity itself is threatened by an increased dependence on machinery. Fascists patrol the streets to insure that the robots maintain their proper place in life, and a scrappy proletariat movement is planning a revolution. The government is merely a pawn of industry, and the industrial leader known as Red Duke is arrogant enough not only to build a tower to the heavens but to commission a robot created in the image of his dead daughter. While that description makes Metropolis sound like virtually all cyberpunk fiction, the film both looks and sounds differently from previous meditations on the relationship between man and machine. For a start, the Art Deco style of the original Metropolis dominates the film. Creator Osamu Tezuka’s world looks like the future as imagined in the 1920s and 1930s, and his robots and vehicles – not to mention the fashions the characters wear – clearly belong to that era. The audience could never confuse the Metropolis robots with the flashy boxy mecha that populate most modern anime series. Secondly, director Rin Taro opted to use period popular music instead of the avant-techno we’ve come to expect in anime. The mating of Dixieland jazz to science-fiction may seem eccentric on paper, but it feels just right within the context of the movie. New versions of the old standards were recorded expressly for the film, although the original version of the Ray Charles ballad "Can’t Stop Loving You" turns up near the end.
Given that this is anime, there are some interesting and unorthodox relationships throughout the film. One trio of characters consists of a Japanese detective visiting Metropolis, his nephew, and a robot assistant. Another consists of the Red Duke, the android version of his daughter and his adopted son, who resents and hates all of robotkind. The character design for all the characters is childlike, as if to suggest that as individuals, they are all very small and incapable of great deeds on their own. The ambiance suggests "Little Nemo" somehow mixed with H.G. Wells.
The creators of Metropolis are among the all-time greatest talents in the world of anime. Osamu Tezuka, who wrote the manga the film is based on, is the father of Japanese animation. While best known in the United States for creating Astro Boy, Tezuka is best remembered in Japan for an unbroken chain of thoughtful, sometimes heartbreaking, manga. His graphic style, heavily rooted in the Art Deco cartooning of the Fleischer Studios, is well represented here. Rin Taro, the film’s director, previously directed the first Galaxy Express feature film as well as X:1999, another stunningly creative albeit largely unsung film. Otomo, who adapted Tezuka’s manga into a screenplay, is the creator of Akira, the groundbreaking anime feature film that helped start the whole anime craze in the USA back in the late 1980s. It’s a treat to enjoy such a concentrated example of all three men’s work.
If Metropolis has a flaw, it is that the characters largely remain undeveloped. I’m not sure if that is unintentional, however. In the original silent film, the characters were largely ciphers shaped by their environments, and it’s possible that Tezuka and company wished to make the same comment in this film. Regardless, this is a film worth seeing more than once. There aren’t many films like Metropolis being made anymore, and we should treasure them when they come along.
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