The shape (and sound) of things to come
September 17, 2004 | 12:00am
Ever since watching Metropolis as a teenager, I have wanted to commission Fritz Lang to design my room. Watching it from a fuzzy Betamax copy on a screen much smaller than the one installed in the offices of Joh Frederson at the Tower of Babel, Lang’s singular vision of the future never lost any of its awful grandeur even when pared down to a small TV set. Peculiar since puberty, I imagined the transformation of my modest-sized box of a room into vertiginous walls of concrete the hues of Jose Legaspi paintings, all manner of fantastic contraptions from Rotwang’s laboratory strewn around its floors and perhaps a replica of Brigitte Helm to molest and relieve my adolescent longings on. No matter the constraints of the space, Lang could be relied upon to make it look bigger – and better – than it actually was, much like the sets of his films.
The film has had equally curious effect on others. Internationally renowned Filipino director Raymond Red was studying painting at the Makiling High School for the Arts when he caught a retrospective of German silent films: seeing Metropolis was no less than a revelation, the light on the road to Damascus projected through a strip of celluloid onto the silver screen. Until then, Red’s favorite movie was George Lucas’ Hollywood space-pomp Star Wars, seen at the commercial cinema two years previous.
Despite seeing Lang’s film only on a 16 mm reduction print, it left a much bigger impression on the director’s mind – notwithstanding the spectacle of going through space at light speed. (Adolf Hitler was also reportedly a fan. The day Goebbels informed Lang that the Fuhrer wanted to commission him to shoot the propaganda films for the Third Reich was the same one the director chose to exile himself.)
"Despite its age, the film still provokes a reaction," says Red. "I admired the way it portrayed a world gone astray: It’s very prophetic and moving." Coincidentally, the year he first saw it was 1984.
It’s ironic that a film about the future nearly didn’t have one. About a quarter of the film is gone, destroyed by the elements and misplaced by circumstance. Since its debut at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo in Berlin on January 10, 1927, the film’s original cut of about 13, 823 feet – clocking in at 153 minutes – was mutilated to make it more accessible for a mass audience. The chief culprit, playwright Channing Pollack, claimed that the film had "no restraint and logic…symbolism run riot," excising major portions of the film to bring it down to conventional feature length.
Yet for all its troubles, Metropolis is still a classic – surviving with its reputation intact despite the fact that most critics have never seen it in its entirety. In some festivals, the film was even colorized and – much worse – accompanied by a score by Giorgio Moroder.
"It was the birthday of Malek (Lopez) and he had friends over, one of whom brought over a projector," explains Noel de Brackinghe, the other half of Rubber Inc. when asked about when the idea to score Metropolis came up. "After a while, Malek pops out a DVD of the film and, knowing its cult status, we challenged each other to pick music to go with the film."
One of the guests at the party, writer/musician Lourd de Veyra remembers that the duo’s music, which can be described as beautiful as the chance meeting on an operating table of a synthesizer and a computer hard-drive, jived well with the visuals. As if by fate, the Goethe Institute asked the group some weeks later to provide the score for the screening of the film’s newly restored version at the SM Megamall.
Notwithstanding the visual impact of the Lumière’s arriving train on its initial audience more than a century ago, cinema today is not purely a visual medium. For better or worse, score plays a vital part in the films we enjoy today. For sci-fi fans, especially – who can imagine Kubrick’s floating space ship without Strauss’ Blue Danube Waltz or not hearing Bernard Herrmann’s theremin inside Klaatu’s flying saucer? For present audiences, surely the sound is the fury. (Or, at the very least, a big part of it.)
"It’s the best version of the film I’ve seen so far!" enthused Teddy Co, the Philippines’ foremost film authority, having already attended several different presentations of Metropolis in the past. He wasn’t only referring to the clarity of the new print but rather more to the excitements of seeing the drama of this familiar city coming alive to the sound of a purely synthetic soundtrack of laser-guided melodies and beats the sound of the Moloch Machine’s heart. Even for purists who rather prefer the original score of Gottfried Huppertz, it would be hard to not see merit in the extraordinary dimensions the film takes with its techno-suffused score. From the onset when we plunge from the grand vista of a concrete skyline of high-rises to the belly of its inner workings with shots of pumps, flywheels and crankshafts, the electronic score places one instantly into the main thoroughfares of the super-city as well as the its back alleys, establishing the mood and themes not unlike the first sentence for William Gibson’s definitive cyberpunk novel Neuromancer (wherein he described the skies as having "the color of television, tuned to a dead channel"). Before filming, Lang declared that he "was fascinated by machines." Why trust anything else to provide its music, to lend it character and soul?
"The general feel of the film lent itself very well to techno. Very minimal and robotic," says de Brackinghe. "This also provides a bleaker, starker future vision. Some might not agree to the obvious use of 4/4 ‘dance’ beats but I felt using these rules adds to the whole ‘techno’ vision of the film and removes some of that humanness again making the whole ‘techno future’ more real and impending."
Indeed, sequences like Rotwang’s chase after Maria in the underground catacombs or her robot-clone’s lascivious dance in a Yoshiwara nightspot become amphetamine-jolts of sensuality and terror, an urban symphony reenacted every night in the underground clubs of our own present.
Red advises modern audiences to bear in mind the era in which the film was made. Perhaps it’s a sentiment he expresses because of his own experiences lecturing and trying to impart an appreciation of the movie to the few students who manage to keep awake watching it for their film degrees. Who can blame these kids though when they’ve been bombarded all their lives with CGI enhanced sequences of Hollywood carnage or shots of an upended ship even in its romantic offerings?
No matter, Rubber Inc. has succeeded where all those film appreciation classes have failed: They have brought Lang’s mythical city into the now where it belongs, breathed fresh life into it like Frankenstein’s monster and introducing it to a brave new world.
Gweilo’s Bar and Restaurant is located at 109 Carlos Palanca St., Legaspi Village, Makati. DJ Ro plays the hits from the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s every Monday. Happy Hour all night long! (Sadly no Lionel Ritchie.) You might even catch a glance at The Philippine STAR’s own Nordic deity of rock, Val Halen, himself nursing a beer at one of its corners.
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