Before “talkies” hit the scene in 1927 with The Jazz Singer and became widespread in the 1930s, silence was expected to accompany a film. In some cases, a live orchestra might play in a very large theater, but this was a time when sound and picture had not yet merged onscreen. For Ingmar Bergman’s stylistic background silence to strike me the way it did must mean a fairly complete shift has occurred since the time of silent films, when a picture had only the natural sounds of the theater to accompany it, or when a full orchestral score was intertwined with film as a part of the medium.

Much has changed since the early days, though much is ever the same. Whenever a crucial element is missing from something familiar, the absence is subtly jarring, exerting a slight tug at the psyche that says, is something missing? We all know this feeling when we’ve felt the emptiness of a pocket without a wallet, or realized we’ve left the most important item for dinner at the grocery store. The films discussed here ask the question, are we missing something crucial?

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, I’d like to do some time traveling and explore three semi-obscure dystopian films set in an ambiguous future, in which the world for most people is a pretty bland and lifeless place based on hyper-mechanism, uniformity, exploitation and captivity. Pretty romantic, huh? We’ll go back all the way to 1927 with Fritz Lang’s classically stunning Metropolis, jump ahead to 1971 with George Lucas’s first full length picture, THX 1138, and conclude with the visually innovative 2009 computer animated film Metropia.

What all three have in common is that, like famous dystopian novels Brave New World and 1984, as well as the great short story The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster, the world is an exaggerated sort of hell that is based enough in the reality of contemporary technology and politics to be at least a little unnerving. All three films have an underground element, where the oppressed workers either live or work beneath the surface of the earth and plan either escape from that world or destruction of it, with appropriately jarring sounds or music to highlight the unnatural aspects of such a life.

If we consider film a technological advancement of theater, orchestra and opera, I maintain that the essence of film, like theater and opera (and literature, my personal forte), depends on storylines that come alive because they are well constructed, well written, well acted and well composed, not only visually or aurally stunning; sound and picture are tools to enliven story, not to replace it. Stunning visual effects or a great score are meager compensation for lack of a compellingly executed plot, dialogue and theme, but it can most certainly add to it. This is the special mark of film – it has the potential to do it all. Metropolis certainly does. It is a timeless film that conveys a terrifying future of machination that is still relevant to viewers of today, 84 years after its original release date. The orchestra plays a large part in its success, though our version is of course recorded.

Metropolis is in black and white and like most silent films, the dialogue is either pantomimed or given a captioned screen. The world is divided into an underground machine world and an above ground leisure world, a severe division of the classes. From the very opening scene the music indicates this experience is going to be epic. Vibrating drum beats, harsh violins and whistles introduce the filthy and horrible underground world where human life is reduced to the schedule of machines, and raggedy workers stumble forward as if their legs are made of metal. Their movements with the machines are synchronized with the drums in a way that is simply chilling. In an effective contrast, the upper world is heard through light, happy flutes and harps as we see the golden children of the ruling class dressed in elaborate costumes, running freely through the pleasure garden. All is in order until one saintly woman named Maria travels from the dirty depths up to the garden with a flock of bedraggled children, exuding an air of mystical power and goodness that attracts Freder, son of the Machine Owner, to follow her and willingly switch places with a worker from the bottom. A sweet violin follows Maria and the orchestra picks up a heavy tone during intense scenes of action, such as the escape scene and the eventual destruction of the machine.

Without actually talking, the orchestra speaks loud and clear. If I imagine myself sitting in a large German theater while a musical ensemble plays Gottfried Huppertz’s compelling and apocalyptic score, I feel overtaken by a sense of epic artistry. There is nothing trivial about a 50-piece orchestra, and certainly nothing small about this film, which warns against class divisions and the mechanization of man. Its size and scope, of story, vision, visuals and score, will live on for appreciators of film and film music, despite its older form (and still, there were some impressive skyscapes, scenes of futuristic cities and the ancient tower of Babel). As a modern moviegoer, it took a little conscious patience at first to watch a film without spoken dialogue, and it almost evokes a strange feeling of being almost deaf, but it was not hard to get into at all.If there is any film that will make a newcomer appreciate the depth of film music and its relationship to the picture, it is Metropolis. Despite a somewhat cheesy ending with a nevertheless worthwhile message, I recommend it strongly for lovers of old films, dystopias or orchestras, and especially people who might not give it a chance because it is outside the realm of familiar film viewing. Hearkening back to days of theater and opera, Metropolis occupies a space midway between live art and virtual imaging, bridging the divide between where we came from and where we are going.

Forty-four years later, the fear of technological oppression persists in THX 1138, and although it is not in black and white and does have sound, the sensation it evokes is one of soundlessness and motionlessness, a world that is bland and empty. The main character is THX 1138, a male worker who lives and works underground in a factory assembly line that constructs android policemen.

He lives with his female partner, LUH, and like soma in Brave New World, workers are given daily prescription drugs that inhibit emotions and sexual appetite. When LUH decides to rebel and stop them both from taking their medication, their senses are reawakened and they make love. There are Big Brother-esque cameras in their room and the authorities soon come after them, separate them, throw THX in an endless white prison with no walls, and eventually THX and a co-worker escape into the superstructure outside of their living hole, losing LUH along the way. The android police chase them, but THX escapes and the last scene shows him climbing up to the surface and witnessing his first red sunset and flock of birds, a hopeful ending to conclude a bleak hour and a half.

The use of sounds in this movie generally correlates thematically with the story. Long, dissonant electronic chords add an eerie effect to the already eerie picture of seeing workers dressed all in white jumpsuits existing in a stark white world with white walls and large empty spaces full of shadows and blankness. Ghostly gospel singing set amidst disjointed synthetic sounds and rhythmic machine interludes are combinations that are equally as creepy. It’s a slow film, with hardly any variation between scenes or expressions, characterized by many long shots filled with little action, and the music is the same way. Overall, the sounds are synthetic and comprise of long, layered notes that move forward with a lot of distortion. The strong points of this film are its thematically stylistic starkness, of both picture and sound, though the story is mind-numbingly slow. George Lucas first made this as a short film while a student at UCLA, and I’m positive it should have just stayed a short film – the same point would have been made without the agony of having to sit through 86 minutes of mundaneness. Though I recognize the thematic significance of shooting scenes that are ten minutes long, during which you can leave to make a strong drink and return without having missed anything, to indicate a world in which variation is punished, it was not enjoyable to watch. This is after having sat through two-and-a-half hours of a silent film with considerably less boredom. Though the soundtrack is appropriate and chilling, a more compelling execution of story is needed for it to be truly effective. It seems as if Metropolis was ahead of its time, and THX 1138 just sort of stagnates somewhere in a limbo world.

Metropia is another slow dystopian story with similar themes and sounds, though the visual style is radically different. The animation is unlike any I have seen before, with astonishingly realistic facial constructions amid a more cartoon-like rest of the world. All the characters’ heads are just slightly larger in proportion to a real person’s head-body ratio, and for such realistic facial expressions, their bodily movements are somewhat twitchy and stiff, not unlike the workers in Metropolis.

Like in THX 1138, shadows and disrepair are constant motifs throughout Metropia, and our protagonist, Roger, moves through an empty and derelict Europe, taking the subway from his underground living cell to the factory where he works. This is a visually impressive story about a regular guy who stumbles upon the corruption of major corporations when he starts hearing voices in his head. This is a clue that sound is a major player in this film, and it is.

Scenes are characteristically confusing in terms of sound and consist of a foreground, which is usually monotonous like Roger’s dull voice, and a background, which features cacophonous crowds, whistling machines or whispering voices that come from somewhere unknown. What THX 1138 did by juxtaposing silence and discordant synth, Metropolis does by layering busy sounds on top of each other. The effect is a sort of mimicry of the questioning and confusion going on inside Roger’s head. He denies hearing the voice at first, but upon seeing the beautiful girl on ads for dandruff shampoo, he is compelled to follow her, and he starts listening to the voice. She brings him to a meeting in which the head honcho of the shampoo company is demonstrating how the product allows for a subject’s thoughts to be heard and controlled. The rest of the story involves death and destruction, adultery and a chase scene, eventually resulting in the evil company being destroyed and Roger watching a sunrise to the sound of children’s laughter. It’s another semi-happy ending with the last scene indicating hope for a better future, though somehow I never really became too invested in the somewhat thin-woven plot or characters, other than my preoccupation with ogling their strange heads.

Within all these stories, the technology motif is prominent and it speaks to what seems like an inevitable fear of machines disempowering humans, seen in countless Hollywood blockbusters and independent films alike. In these films, however, agency is still in the hands of humans. Humans were the ones exploiting other humans, and machines simply became the tools of the powerful. Technology allowed for corruption to run rampant, and only reconnecting with a vital part of the human “soul” could put things back in balance. If there is anything uniquely human, it is music. I’m convinced a major reason why Metropolis has such a timeless and profound effect is because listening to the score is like listening to musicians playing passionately for the redemption of the spirit. The entire piece is fluid and seamless, perfect in its collaboration with the picture, and truly in this case, music speaks louder than words.

Interestingly, as the technology improved over time in these three films, it had little to no effect on the quality of the story or its execution. Metropolis was a much better film than THX 1138 and though Metropia takes the cake for visual innovation and compelling graphics, it still pales in comparison to the 1927 masterpiece. Humans are mythmakers, storytellers, singers and dancers, and we always have been. Creating a masterful tale that speaks to a deeply human fear or desire is not a feat that machines are capable of. Not yet, anyway. And as technology continues to advance and become more and more sophisticated, humans must continue to tell great stories, to wonder at the mystery of it all. Listening to that baby cry, or watching that silent film, or listening to a great orchestra, is like a soothing solvent for the ills of a time when yesterday is urged forgotten and tomorrow paved over. We rush forward, that childlike tug beckoning, are we missing something?

Brief end notes:

• Metropolis was cut by Paramount in 1927 for U.S. audiences, and since then the full original footage was believed to be irretrievably lost, until a few dusty reels were discovered in Argentina in 2008. This remarkable turn of events led expert film archivists to release a restored version of the film in 2010 – the version I watched.
• Not everyone is gloom and doom about the computer takeover, and some are even optimistic about advances like mind chips and thought downloads. Neuroscientist Miguel A. L. Nicolelis praises the oncoming abilities of thought-controlled machines in a recent Scientific American article. Metropia would ask, then people next?
• I personally am going to take the ambivalent stance and say that computers and the Internet are paving a whole new path for humanity, be it great in some respects and detrimental in others. Nonetheless, this scene from the new comedy TV series Portlandia is usually how I feel as a player in the information era. Can you relate?
• Most importantly, if there is ever a live show of Metropolis in a theater near you, do not hesitate to attend. I am certain it would be just as epic as seeing Avatar in 3-D and Surround Sound.
  • P.S. Avatar has already been dissected so much, but if I were to compare the epic of Metropolis to any film today, it could only be Avatar for size, scope, story and score, with contemporary imaging and themes. But we can make that connection without killing it.