"METROPOLIS" TOWERS

The Silent Greats of the 1920s worked with the language of faces and bodies, the language of light and shadow, telling stories by showing them with moving pictures. The passage of time now seems to indicate the novelty of computer animation, in spite of the ability to often fool the eye, in fact impairs filmmaking, impairs storytelling inventiveness. Computer-generated effects may be likened to anabolic steroids, which initially seem a powerful aid, but which inevitably lead to dependency and depletion.

Metropolis (1927), directed by Fritz Lang, reminds us it is better to create a financially unsuccessful masterpiece than to churn financially successful schlock. A film far ahead of its time, Metropolis went effectively unrecognized by the public for years, yet it tops a short list of the most influential movies ever made.

From The Bride of Frankenstein to The Terminator, Modern Times to Blade Runner, Star Wars to V For Vendetta, the vast cinematic shadow cast by Metropolis uniquely inspires movie images and themes spanning nearly a century.

It's a story about haves and have nots, the minority rich and the majority poor. It's a story about humanity in the industrial future told at the dawn of fascism. 

The story of Metropolis also concerns the now-timely issue of robots replacing workers. It is not, however, the first great film to deal with the subject of artificial life. That distinction belongs to another German filmmaker, Paul Wegener, who wrote, directed, and starred in The Golem: How He Came Into Being (1920). 

Ostensibly created in order to defend the Jewish quarter in Medieval Prague (the very word "robot" is Czech for "worker slave"), the real function of the Golem is to usurp from women the power of giving birth. This was not Wegener's first film featuring the character from Jewish legend. Two less-polished works made during WWI precede.

Wegener's early Expressionist movie influenced other German filmmakers--notably Fritz Lang--and also Hollywood. Often mistakenly called a "Jewish Frankenstein" story, actually James Whale's 1931 film starring Boris Karloff is closer to a Hollywood version of The Golem. Which accounts for Whale's work bearing so little resemblance to the novel by Mary Shelley.

Author Thea Von Harbou, who penned all of Fritz Lang's scripts during his most productive period for over a dozen years, wrote about the disconnect between the Head which devises automated advancements and the Hands which operate such systems. Technological efficiency alone is not itself progress. Between the two there must be mediation, and this Von Harbou calls Heart.

Brigitte Helm, who had minimal movie experience before being cast as the star of the film, plays more characters in Metropolis than Peter Sellers does in Dr. Strangelove (1964) and plays all of them exceptionally well. The most visually striking character she plays is that of the Machine-Man. (Though it is called a man, it resembles a woman.) 

The product of an inventor named Rotwang, the Machine-Man is made to resemble Maria (Helm), the leader of a (literally) underground rebellion for one sole purpose: to trick the majority working poor, like a ringer from the inside, and destroy all hope for mediation. 

The artificial Maria, who looks exactly like the real thing but acts nothing like her, excites the suckered masses and whips them into a frenzy specifically to "let those in the depths use force and do wrong" in order to in turn justify the authoritarian use of force against them.

At times the masterpiece of German Expressionist film reads like a playbook of 21st-Century politics.

Depending on one's aesthetic, Metropolis may well be the most visually striking movie ever made. The restored version on DVD is jaw-droppingly clear, pristine, simply incredible to behold. Packed with fantastically imaginative architecture monumental in every respect, Metropolis amazes the senses with pure inventive filmmaking.

The monocle-capped eye of the visionary filmmaker, like a camera lens growing out of Lang's head, created the indelible images of a non-verbal experience essential to greatness in the medium. That today this art is largely lost due to the focus on CG effects for the sake of CG effects should be a matter of some concern.

Stewart Kirby writes for

THE INDEPENDENT

and 

TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE

BURNS' "TWAIN" HITS MARK

America's greatest writer used to have red hair. With his piercing eyes indicating the keenest of wits and a lovably cantankerous nature, he cut an instantly recognizable figure. He held many jobs, wrote for multiple newspapers, and was spectacularly inept at business. A natural-born storyteller and genius with words, he wrote constantly: articles, short stories, autobiographical sketches, and books featuring tall tales and a strong sense of place.

Mark Twain, however, lost the fortune he married into on endless get-richer-quicker schemes. His wife's father made millions cornering the coal market during the Civil War. Twain had an opportunity to invest in Bell Telephone. Instead, he frittered it away on inventions such as a clamp for keeping children's bedsheets down at night.

In this fascinating documentary directed by Ken Burns, we learn that Samuel Langhorne Clemens (his pseudonym is riverboat pilot-ese marking the division between safe and unsafe water) was at various times not only a pilot but a printer's assistant, a civil servant, and a prospector who never struck gold. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he joined the Confederate Army--never once fighting a battle due to beating a hasty retreat and heading out West. And, having reached Nevada, in order to avoid facing a guy in a pistol duel, continued on further into California. 

His boyhood experiences in Hannibal, Missouri, provided in later life a seemingly inexhaustible storehouse of material. He and his friends enjoyed an idyllic existence smoking corncob pipes, and playing hooky down at the river and in the forests where they plotted pranks against the innocent town. One such friend, Tom Blankenship, a smart, uneducated kid envied by all who knew him, served as the inspiration for the title character in what would become Twain's masterpiece, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Following the format he perfected with his breakthrough documentary The Civil War, Burns uses primarily still photos from the life of the man who was once the most famous writer in the world, beloved for his ability to make people laugh.

"I never tried to cultivate the cultivated classes," said Twain. "I always went for bigger game: the masses."

He was a writer read by everyday folks. The People's Writer, who made the way we talk something to be admired, has long since been co-opted by Ivory Tower scholars hanging onto, if not his coattails precisely, then certainly the brim of his proverbial hog's head hat. As actor Hal Holbrook observes, "The European language was supposed to be the ideal, but he idolized the American language."

Unencumbered by a college education, Twain wrote as though he invented writing, frequently announcing his acceptance of this premise, and even daring to further it: "I'm not an American, I'm the American!"

In the words of playwright Arthur Miller, "You read any page of his, and you know that there's a poet who's crafting all those lines."

Covering his bases, the poet chucked hardballs at the Palaces of the Gilded Age (a term he coined) even as he was stepping into a palace of his own. Financial worries tolerably eased subsequent to marrying the millionaire's daughter, Twain gloried in lavish luxuries for years. In his beloved Hartford House he doted on his daughters (his favorite being the one who started writing a biography about him) and spent long hours fondly recalling the unfettered independence of happy boyhood days when he could really dream of being rich. 

While the array of experts on the subject could stand to be a deal wider--it's pretty much just Miller, Holbrook, Dick Gregory, a historian from The Civil War, and a handful of unknown writers--it's the most thorough documentary yet on the dude who made writin' like regular folks talk a downright liberation of literature.

Stewart Kirby, who writes articles, short stories, autobiographical sketches, and books featuring tall tales and a strong sense of place, also writes for

THE INDEPENDENT

and

TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE

"CRUMB" DRAWS RAVES

He created Mr. Natural. He fathered Fritz the Cat. He invented Whiteman. His name is Robert Crumb, and this is his story.

One fateful day in 1955, young Robert and his two brothers, Charles and Maxon, saw on TV Disney's first live-action feature film, Treasure Island, starring Robert Newton as Long John Silver. Such was the power of this moment, nothing would ever be the same again. This was because Charles, the eldest, found his true calling: Comic books!

Realizing he needed to live inside the world of Treasure Island forever through hand-drawn comics, Charles set his brothers to work. They created a club, and with monastic devotion dedicated themselves to the cause of Treasure Island every day. For 6 or 7 years. In the words of Maxon, "It was like these three primordial monkeys working it out in the trees."

         

Trapped in a world he never made--a world of awful bullies and other inferiors blind to his artistic genius--Crumb vowed revenge. And achieved it through underground comics. A genre he created.

         

At last, our hero could expose "the sickness under the surface" of the healthy American '50s family façade. Like a latter day Daumier or Bruegel, Crumb poured his energy into illustrating his inordinate fondness for getting kicks on his aunt's cowboy boots. Which, alone in a closet, he was wont to straddle while singing, "Jesus loves me, this I know, for The Bible tells me so..."

         

Yes, Crumb realized he had issues. Precisely like everyone else, only more so. But unlike everyone else, he had the decency to draw them and share.

         

While exorcising--and exercising--his personal demons through art became Crumb's career, the film makes clear that if he can't draw, he simply feels depressed and suicidal. "It's a deeply ingrained habit," he says, "all because of my brother Charles."

         

Whereas Charles had no interests at all other than comic books, Robert was (and presumably still is) an avid fan of vintage ragtime and blues records. Consequently, this music is an essential character in the documentary.

         

Just as Charles used to walk around in public shamelessly dressed as Long John Silver, so too Robert found his niche in the attire and musical interests of 1930s folk. Keeps his TV on black and white, too, good-naturedly shrugging away the tearful protests of his children.

         

"When I hear old music, it's like one of the few times I have a love for humanity," he says.

         

He turned down guest-hosting "Saturday Night Live." He turned down doing an album cover for The Rolling Stones. Sheena, Queen of the Jungle? Now her he might turn off, but he would never turn down a piggy-back ride swinging through the trees.

         

In film terms, Crumb is a sleeper, with legs. And in Crumb terms, those legs are shapely and powerful.

         

It's about art, sexuality, family, and the history of America. It's the movie that takes schlock to task, and it's about time.

         

Eureka, CA, by the way, gets a specific mention.

         

For those tired of the "unified field of bought, sold, market-researched everything," the natural choice is Terry Zwigoff's 1994 gem.

Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE

"CLOCKWORK" TIMELESS

          Stanley Kubrick has the best reputation in filmmaking because he did everything exceptionally well and never repeated himself. He produced, directed, and wrote. He worked camera, lights, and sound. He had a hand in costumes, publicity--virtually everything. Many filmmakers have made much more money than Stanley Kubrick, and many have received more awards, but rightly or wrongly, no one's mojo comes as close.

          Of all the movies Kubrick made (thirteen features and three short documentaries), only one was so dangerous that, for the safety of his family, he had to pull it from United Kingdom distribution for 27 years until his death.

          A Clockwork Orange (1971), is a dystopian black comedy, a subversive film with a futuristic visual style and disturbing scenes involving what the central figure in his narration calls "a bit of the old ultra-violence."

          Played to the hilt by Malcolm McDowell, Alexander DeLarge is the sort of a boy who might enjoy reading The Bible only if he imagines himself as a Roman soldier scourging Christ. And that's one of his nicer traits.

          Wearing a bowler hat and codpiece and carrying a cane, Alex sports false upper and lower eyelashes around his right eye like tribal paint, the window to his soul resembling a gear cog. McDowell's sharp, sarcastic narration creates an intimacy with the audience, even inviting complicity. A literary antecedent might be Poe's narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart."

          It is a disturbing fact that Anthony Burgess wrote the novel, published in 1962, as a cathartic exercise subsequent to his first wife's brutalization. Containing 242 words of a slang language Burgess created called Nadsat, A Clockwork Orange concerns the state taking the sweetness and color out of violent offenders and turning them into machines.

          What makes the film remarkable is Kubrick's sheer facility with the medium. Juxtaposing classical music with primal pursuits, Kubrick creates friction uniquely, unforgettably. Loaded with iconic images, Clockwork explodes across the screen.

          Eighteen years prior, Marlon Brando terrorized parents in The Wild One playing the leader of a motorcycle gang. Yet compared to Clockwork, The Wild One plays like Mary Poppins.

          No, Clockwork is not the most violent film on record. Far from it. Arguably it doesn't even compare with the nightly news. But Clockwork has much more going on than a few scenes of highly stylized violence.

          When, for example, Alex breaks into the health farm where a woman practices calisthenics surrounded by cats, keen observation reveals a painting in the background depicting, not merely a nude female form, but one with the clothing specifically removed from covering the breasts in exactly the same manner which Alex has imitated with a pair of scissors during an assault.

          So the filmmaker seems to be saying that Alex and his three droogs are themselves the product of an abusive system and degraded culture. It's the water in which they swim.

          Clockwork is one of those rare films where the viewer can always find something new because to call Kubrick a perfectionist is putting it mildly.

          Then there's the Ninth. Kubrick incorporates Beethoven's greatest symphony into his work just as Beethoven did with Schiller's poem. Bursting with "angel trumpets and devil trombones," A Clockwork Orange remains unsurpassed as a cinematic experience as challenging as it is sublime.

Malcolm McDowell

Stewart Kirby writes for

THE INDEPENDENT

and

TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE

"READY PLAYER ONE" VIRTUAL MASTERPIECE

         

In the vast cinematic desert of predicable over-advertised movies with requisite sequels, something fresh and new.

         

Too many movies--maybe the majority--get too much hype (sometimes being advertised a full year in advance), over-rely on computer animation, and are automatically accompanied by the expectation of at least one sequel, probably four. And it grows tiresome. Lucky for us, once in a while a movie gets released with incredible quality and without any expectations at all. 

         

Following swiftly on the heels of the excellent drama The Post comes this innovative rollercoaster ride from Steven Spielberg. 

         

Set in 2045, Ready Player One imagines a future with an increasingly economically disenfranchised population preferring virtual reality to real life. 

         

The virtual reality system called the OASIS is designed by an eccentric introvert who upon his death reveals with a video his Willy Wonka-ish plan to bequeath ownership of the OASIS (worth half a trillion dollars) to the gamer who finds three hidden keys and obtains the Golden Egg.

         

Game on!

         

Ready to play is one Wade Watts (Sheridan), a teenager whose online avatar has hair perpetually blown by unseen winds, and whose best friend is a gamer he's never met called Aech (Miller). 

         

Like a VR version of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, except much bigger and much faster, hoards of gamers race in competition against each other beset by pop culture adversaries including King Kong.

         

Meanwhile, a corporate giant helmed by a sleaze named Sorrento (Mendelsohn) wants in on the action, and is ready to game the system in any way required to win the fabulous fortune. 

         

What results from this premise is an often hilarious and wildly entertaining ride, yes, but also quite a bit more than that. There is substance in the juxtaposition of seeming powerlessness in the real world with the seeming god-like powers in the OASIS. When Wade meets an avatar called Art3mis (Cooke) in the hunt, Aech warns him that for all Wade knows, attractive and exciting Art3mis is actually a three hundred pound dude named Chuck living in his grandmother's basement.

         

The 2009 Bruce Willis film Surrogates may have inspired some of what we see here. Bruce's suave virtual self compares with everyone in the OASIS presenting an unintentionally comic, vastly more powerful version of the self. But on the whole, Ready Player One offers a unique vision and operates at multiple levels.

         

On one level, the hunt for the keys shows us a world where anything is possible and looks totally real. Aech, for example, is about as big as the Hulk, and Sorrento's avatar looks like Superman in a business suit. On another level though, we see that an infantilized and dehumanized population desperate to escape life is harrowing.

READY PLAYER ONE

Starring Tye Sheridan,

Olivia Cooke,

Ben Mendelsohn,

Lena Waithe,

T.J. Miller,

Simon Pegg,

Mark Rylance

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Written by Zak Penn, Ernest Cline

Based on the novel by Ernest Cline

Runtime 140 minutes

Rated PG-13

Stewart Kirby writes for

TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE

and

THE INDEPENDENT