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Directed By: Shigeyuki "Rintaro" Hayashi
Streaming Service: Google Play, Apple TV, Prime Video, Internet Archive
Release Date: May 26, 2001
Rating: PG-13
Duration: 1 hour 53 minutes
Description: A future society, where humans and robots co-exist. Amidst the chaos created by anti-robot factions, detective Shunsaku Ban and his sidekick Ken-ichi are searching for rebel scientist Dr. Laughton, to arrest him and seize his latest creation, a beautiful young girl named Tima. When they locate them, Shunsaku soon realizes that the eccentric scientist is protected by a powerful man and his fierce desire to reclaim a tragic figure from his past and therefore is beyond their reach.
Trailer Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GswgylL44AQ&t=3s
Metropolis is one of those movies that every person who is into film should have seen. Unfortunately for me, I only knew of this film. I was familiar with the title and the overall vibe of the film but I had no real idea of what to expect - I did not even know this film had an anime version until I saw an ad for it on my Instagram. In the wake of the 2024 election results, I decided to run away from my despair by watching said dystopian cyberpunk film.
The Loft is a beautiful local theatre here in Tucson. I've watched many kitsch-indie films in this theatre so I feel like this was the perfect location to watch this movie. They played it in screening Room 1 which is an absolutely massive and ornate theatre. The setting matched the absolute scale of this film.
For me, the two biggest takeaways from this film were the visuals and the score. The art style was both cute and gritty. The individual character designs were beautiful and unique and reminded me of Astroboy. There was so much variety in the character designs with both the human and robot characters. Everyone felt very distinct, and you could tell exactly who they are and what they stood for based off of their design.
I also loved the contrast between the 2D hand drawn frames against the 3D CGI. I thought the two styles complimented each other really well. I also find it interesting how beautiful the CGI was for the time. In modern times, CGI is "objectively better" yet they fall in a strange liminal space where it doesn't look stylized nor realistic. I think this film struck a beautiful medium in its usage of CGI and capturing the futuristic essence of the film.
I thought the score was absolutely brilliant too! Lately I've been on a bit of a jazz kick, so the avant-garde electro jazz / retro swing instrumentals really added to the film and almost served as a character itself. Also, there's a bit of Ray Charle's in the final climax so that was a fun addition to the film.
Overall, I thought this was a beautiful film! I can't compare it to the original 1920s version nor the novel - however, I feel like the pieces of media shouldn't be compared because they all do something different. I definitely think it's worth the watch!
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