moroder metropolis

I watched Giorgio Moroder’s restoration of Metropolis on LaserDisc the other day, maybe a week ago. It’s old enough that it was called “Laser Videodisc” and had a cool Vestron intro and outro. They really knew how to make a video seem like a cool thing you get to watch in the 80s, instead of like, a hellish thing you are subjected to because what else do you have to do, like it is today.

I have to say that I find much of the restoration unnecessary. I do appreciate the concept art added between scenes and the occasional explanation of things that happened in cut scenes. I think the “added color” was not of the greatest quality. It didn’t exactly detract from the viewing experience, as far as I can tell, though I haven’t seen any other version of the film, but it was usually just a tint to a scene, and sometimes a tint localized to clothing, hair or lips, leaving skin looking ghostly.

The translation felt sparse. Many scenes had no translation for a long stretch of words, and while I didn’t ever feel lost, I did wish I knew what was being said on occasion.

Giorgio is an amazing artist of music, and the cast of musicians that contributed is shockingly star-studded, which makes this so much harder to say - the soundtrack did not on any occasion feel appropriate to the tone of the scene. Hearing Freddie Mercury’s voice in like, a dungeon chase or something was genuinely jarring. The opening scene felt like it was going to be incredibly powerful and the song chosen dampened it significantly. To tell you the truth, I think I may just rewatch the disc tonight or so with the sound off. I think it would improve the experience.

For all my issues with it, I loved the film. It felt halfway between the play-like Movies of old and realer-than-life multimedia experiences of today. It was extraordinarily prescient and powerful in messaging, even with few words uttered.

The film is 99 years old and the novel is now 101. It predicts our present as a bleak future, but ends with encouragement. Notes should be taken from it on how to proceed from where we are, to where we want to be. I understand some may feel it presents a more ideal solution than they feel is likely to be possible, but it is worth noting that there is, in fact, a society who has gone through this and come out the other side more powerful and equitable than ever.