Art in film: forms and functions

Matrix, Blade Runner, And Metropolis

Science-Fiction films have evolved through the decades as technology as progressed, allowing for greater Special Effects and visual demonstrations of worlds overrun by machines.

Three such films - The Matrix, Blade Runner, and Metropolis have manifested their stories not only through their scenery and futuristic landscapes, but also through society and the forces governing them.

In their essays, Stan Brakhage and Giuliana Bruno examine these influences within film and how they demonstrate the relevance of history in a social context; postmodernist influences; and the perceptions of vision as they appear on film.

In Bruno's essay Ramble City: Postmodernism and Blade Runner, Bruno examines the film Blade Runner, as it relates to postmodernism and the ideals surrounding the architecture, and social infrastructure of the world where people lack a 'real' history, and therefore, philosophically, a 'real' existence.

The city of Blade Runner is not the ultramodern, but the postmodern city. It is not an orderly layout of skyscrapers and ultra comfortable, hyper mechanized interiors. Rather, it creates an aesthetic of decay, exposing the dark side of technology, the process of integration" (Bruno 185). Visually, the city emits a feeling of desperation and a fragmented industrial wasteland, rather than a 'Hell on Earth'.

It is also apparent that there is a breakdown of the human condition. The Replicants struggle for a personal identity by searching for their history. Bruno shows this condition as being Schizophrenic in nature and I feel this is accompanied with a fear of 'no past, no future'.

Without a tangible link to their past, the Replicants in turn have nothing for the future. This is also the case in The Matrix, yet there is only a desire for this tangible link once Neo-has seen the 'reality'.

Recycling and waste play an integral part in influencing the lifestyle of the city in Blade Runner. In fact, it is everywhere, and Ridley Scott utilized the camera to demonstrate his interpretations of this futuristic suburban wasteland at a time when 'fresh; views on the future were based on technology working for us.

Brakhage's essay comments on such involvement: "...Once vision may have been given -- that which seems inherent in the infant's eye, an eye which reflects the loss of innocence more eloquently than any other human feature, an eye which soon learns to classify sights, an eye which mirrors the movement of the individual toward death by its increasing inability to see.

But one can never go back, even in imagination" (Metaphors, 66).

In Fritz Lang's Metropolis, there are also visual references to Postmodernism, and uncannily towards a not-so-distant future (at that time). The architecture is portrayed in a stunning art deco reminiscent of Nazi and Fascist milieus of the 1930s.

I consider this vision of future as part of Lang's greatest achievements in this film. Lang demonstrates an inner creativity and imagination and translates it onto film during a time where special effects were mediocre by today's standards.

Lang based his Metropolis on a visit to New York where he witnesses the skyscrapers and capitalist boom amid urban poverty and destitution. It is here, Metropolis, demonstrates a similar Postmodernism wasteland and level of decay as found in Blade Runner.

Where there is a level of pastiche in Blade Runner evident in the architecture and moral decay of the Replicants, Metropolis' pastiche lies within the social and moral decay of the two societies.

Maria's rise as leader of the poorer subterranean workers, and Rotwang's false Maria, is symbolic of government, religion and science's struggle against one another to be sole 'leader' of the people, as well as have the strongest influence on society's path, and role in individualism.

Lang's visual interpretation of the future, was as Brakhage has said continuing "the process of visual perception in its deepest sense and transformed their inspirations into cinematic experiences" (Metaphors, 67).

Metropolis is a combination of our hope for progress and our acknowledgement that every era is obliged to its many pasts, as well as its successors. The film demonstrates the need for history to encourage a belonging in society.

This is similar to the struggle of the Replicants in Blade Runner as they yearn to discover their past.

The Replicants' four-year life spans (offset, claims Tyrell, by the intensity of their lives) are suggestive of the accelerated experience of life under postmodernism.

The film's ruminations on the nature of memory (and the importance of photographs) evoke postmodern ideas about the mediation of life through technology and the elimination of "real" history" (Rowley 35).

As in The Matrix, society in Metropolis, is based on a lower society keeping a higher class alive, and like The Matrix is inspired to change through the actions of one person. In Metropolis it is Maria, and in The Matrix it is Neo.

Visually, we are taken out of our own reality and placed into an environment that challenges our perspectives of the future. "The real is that which is always reproduced" (Bruno, 67).

The Matrix exerts a Postmodernism similar to that in Blade Runner and Metropolis where a group in society are condemned to a postindustrial decay lacking in context and devoid of personal or psychological investment (Pastiche).

The Matrix evokes a dream-like state for Neo, until he is exposed to the harsh reality of his world, and inevitably the reality of his 'non-existence'.