May 27, 2021

I feel off my game lately, and I realize that I might not really get a chance to get back on schedule -- at least not on my working-at-home schedule. Things are chaotic for the next month, and then I go back in person. It all should be fine, but it's kind of startling to realize that maybe COVID is over. It could of course come back, especially if we don't get most people in the world vaccinated, but barring that... I don't know, maybe we're good. 

What would I like to do differently in the post-COVID world? (I mean differently from the pre-COVID world, not differently from the present-COVID world.) More control of my schedule, I think. Or maybe more prudence is the way to look at it. Deliberate social engagements that maybe also have the benefit of being exercise? Like skating the beach path or going on a walk. I want to not overbook myself, get into good routines, but also regularly do something new. It starts getting impossible pretty fast. 

I want to take care of myself so that I'm excited and up for things while also being more willing to say no to people and space things out enough that I have enough opportunities to take a break. I love breaks! 

Okay, I watched a double feature yesterday of METROPOLIS and DARK CITY. 

Mlog Time! 

METROPOLIS 

1927

Directed by: Fritz Lang

Written by: Thea von Harbou

Watch: 5/26/21 

Metropolis is a silent German industrial/art deco film about Freder, the son of the man who rules the city. Above ground, in giant skyscrapers lives the elite – the brains of the city – while far under the ground live the workers, who power the machines that run the city. A prophetess-type figure named Maria has been speaking to the workers about peace with the elites. She wants there to be communication and connection between the two groups. Freder is entranced with Maria and staggered by the hard lives of the workers. An inventor brings a robot to the leader of the city, who decides to get rid of all the workers now that he can replace them with machines. The inventor and leader discover Maria and decide to replace her with a robot who looks like her, so that she might lead the workers to their destruction. It pretty much works, with the workers destroying the machines which causes the worker city to flood. Fortunately, Maria and Freder are able to rescue the children from the city before they drown. 

When the workers discover what has happened, they decide to kill Maria. They burn her on a pier and realize she’s a robot. The workers are told that Freder and the real Maria saved their children. The leader, thinking he’s lost Freder at one point, understands the workers plight and humanity, and Freder is able to join the workers to the leaders. As Maria says, the only way the head and the hands can communicate is through the heart. 

The visuals in this are incredible. Mobs of people wearing gray workers clothes, the white of their faces and hands jumping out of the screen. The sets, the robot. Everything is enchanting and jagged and high drama. Something that I noticed early on was that – because it’s a silent film – something would happen and then you’d see a character involved go run to another character. You could tell he or she was telling the new character what had happened, but there wouldn’t be a dialogue card about it, because the audience already knows what happened. I could use something like this in my own scripts. If one character needs to tell another character about something the audience has seen happen, we don’t have to hear that dialogue. They could be towards the back of some larger scene/spectacle. The important part for the audience would be the exposition of knowing that this character now knows and of seeing their reaction to the news. A good tool to have handy. I didn’t realize until watching this movie how easy it is to fill in information like that. 

Brigitte Helm’s performances as Maria and Robot Maria were excellent. She was angelic and creepy and funny and cathartic. Wow. This film looked like it cost one billion dollars. So many crowd scenes, so many special effects, and tons of elaborate sets – they even flood a whole area. I couldn’t believe how impressive it was, and I was surprised by how much it kept my attention. (On some level, I still have that bias of thinking that anything old must be boring.) 

Rating: ★★★★

DARK CITY 

1998

Directed by: Alex Proyas 

Written by: Alex Proyas, Lem Dobbs, David S. Goyer

Watched: 5/26/21

John Murdoch awakes in a bathtub with no memories. He receives a phone call from Dr. Schreber, who tells him that there are people after him and he needs to get out. There’s a dead woman in his room. Murdoch flees before the men in trench coats and fedoras find him. Detectives arrive later. They’re looking for a serial killer who’s been murdering sex workers. They’re pretty sure it’s John Murdoch. Murdoch realizes he can change reality with his mind. The men – aliens – who are after him can do this as well. These aliens are able to shut everything down, make everybody go to sleep, but it doesn’t work on Murdoch. Murdoch wants to go to Shell Beach but he can’t seem to get there. He can’t leave the city. The aliens have been studying humans, swapping out their memories while they’re asleep and changing the city as well. Murdoch realizes that he doesn’t remember the last time he did anything during the day or the last time he saw the sun. In trying to get to Shell Beach, he discovers that he’s not on Earth but rather a big dark city floating in space, constructed by the aliens. None of the humans remember where they come from or when they were taken. With Dr. Schreber’s help, Neo – I mean Murdoch – is able to defeat the aliens, and he reconstructs the city to his own liking, adding oceans and sun. 

It’s wild how much in common this movie has to the Matrix, which came out a year later. I watched it as a double feature with Metropolis, because the Roger Ebert website said it was a kind of spiritual descendant. I had a few issues with the movie: when Murdoch changes reality with his mind, a warbling effect comes from his forehead in a cone (and there might even be a sound effect) which is very cheesy. Also, the aliens are dying out, and they’re experimenting on the humans in order to survive. It’s not clear how the humans are going to be able to help them. The aliens want to know about the human soul – it’s never clear what the movie means by the human soul. The aliens are a collective brain and the humans are individuals, which is interesting, but it’s not explored. For example, why wouldn’t a collective brain have a soul? The Matrix, with its “the machines use humans for batteries” is much simpler and more convincing. In addition, the dialogue and some of the minor performances are pretty rigid. 

I’m glad that they don’t make it back to Earth at the end of the movie. It’s an interesting ending, knowing that you’re stuck on this small floating alien city, but now you have control. Not quite happy and pretty dangerous. They could do a show based off this or at least a sequel. (It did feel a bit like the floating city Doctor Who episode.) I know Matrix came after it, but Matrix blows it out of the water so much that it’s tough to be properly impressed with Dark City. 

Rating: ★★1/2