Metropolis
dir. Rintaro
Columbia Pictures
The eponymous city of the animated Japanese feature Metropolis bears
about as much resemblance to Fritz Lang's silent film as it does to the
home city of Clark Kent and Lois Lane. Osamu Tezuka, godfather of manga
and the man behind anime's original stateside crossover,
"Astroboy," claimed he drew inspiration for his 1949 comic not from
Lang's 1927 classic, but from its poster he had never actually seen the
film. Not to worry; directed by Rintaro, scripted by Katsuhiro Otomo, and
animated with grandeur by Mad House, this animated adaptation recalls
enough other material to warrant a sea of copyright infringement suits. And that's a criticism
as much to the film's credit as to its fault.
Count the ways: The loosely structured story centers on a technophobic
revolution in the über-utopia of Metropolis, a marvel of mechanics
and plastic precision (see Lang's Metropolis). In the center of
this picturesque city-state (see Disney's Tomorrowland), rich big-shot Duke
Red has erected the Ziggurat, a monolithic skycraper that functions as the
city's nerve center, which Red aims to use as a means to world
domination (see the Book of Genesis). Red is also covertly building
a perfect android the likeness of his deceased daughter Tima (see
A.I., which conversely co-opts anime's robotic turn of phrase, "mecha"),
whom Red aims to use as a key to said domination (see Otomo's Akira).
But Rock, Red's adopted but unwanted son, is a soldier with a bad case
of sibling rivalry and a violent grudge against robots (see Blade
Runner). Additionally, a private detective newcomer to Metropolis,
Shunsaku (see Who Framed
Roger Rabbit?, if Bob Hoskins' character were a 'toon), gets mixed up with things when his
young nephew Kenichi disappears with Tima. Neither child realizes
that Tima is robot, and this is where the story nimbly delves into sci-fi's
age-old humanity vs. circuitry debate, a theme as familiar to anime
(see Ghost in the Shell) as it is to A.I., Blade Runner and
2001: A Space Odyssey, among so many more.
As you might predict, darkening the story's path the most is its own
convoluted script, which throws in scattered genre tropes a P.I. in
a trenchcoat, a scheming zillionaire and even a mad scientist plus a
postmodern kitchen sink. This all
gets in the way of an obvious attempt at an allegory for Japan's post-World War II
renewal; the film's baggy story structure saves this point for far too
late the end after riding out too much time as a Metropolis
travelogue.
When all is said and done, Tima is a man-made weapon who proves a
little more destructive than bargained for she's a veritable atom bomb.
And as history keeps painfully repeating, explosions leave a mess to
clean up that's larger and more horrible than simply their blast radius.
In this case, it's a feeling of confusion over national identity
that pervaded post-war Japan at the time Tezuka wrote his comic, made
flesh-and-wire with Tima's unanswered human-or-robot crisis her
final line of "Who am I?" echoes her first learned words (2001,
anyone?). Despite this upheaval, Kenichi emerges hopeful through utopian rubble
(99 percent of sci-fi anime is apocalyptic), adding another humanist notch to the
film's bedpost.
Though the film is derivative, the best anime usually is,
spitballing liberally from American pop culture TV's Cowboy
Bebop is able proof. That parts of Metropolis are patchwork on paper
does not stop its fiercely artistic originality. Its use of so many media
memories is expert. From frame one, the film's comfy, mostly Dixieland jazz score sets a mood of
retro-futurism that, along with Shunsaku's
old-fashioned detective, evokes what Ray Bradbury
likes to call "nostalgia for the future." Undeniably, Metropolis
presents a much more pleasant worldview than most of its genre ancestors. You
need only compare the bleak landscapes of Rintaro's own X to the
bright colors and roly-poly citizens of Metropolis, the heroes of which
exhibit more spirit than those seen in even the most positive of dystopia
stories.
As atypical as the clarinet licks in its opening sequence,
Metropolis offers an intense climax scored to a reedy Ray Charles love dirge. It
leaves a very soulful resonance for a story conceived four years after
Japan's most devastating attacks and arriving in theaters five months after America's.
Tony Nigro (tony@superheronamedtony.com)