Metropolis directed by Fritz Lang in 1927 is about a futuristic dystopia following Freder, wealthy son of City Master, and Maria , a saintly figure to the workers , overcome and try to bring together workers below and the businesses magnets above.
In the beginning of the movie we see the workers with there heads down walking briskly to work as they change shifts. Further on,we see that there is a underground city.The next scene (06:55) it tells that the workers underground city as there complex known as ” The Sons of Club” on the surface of the earth. Sons of Clubs has stadiums, theaters, and libraries for the elite class, basically there own utopia . We first see Freder, the protagonist and son of the City Master Joh Federson, track racing in a massive field. These are just one of the things the elite class can do in the Sons Of Clubs. In the next scene, we are shown a Pleasure Garden or Eternal Garden, that Freder has for himself (07:55). This Garden was made for simple pleasure and you can see that Freder is playing and entertained by the beautiful women . Further on, Freder goes to the underground city and see all the hard workers trying to keep the machine alive . Afterwards, some machines explodes and some workers perish in the explosion. Freder goes and reports to his father of the explosion, but in between his travels from underground city to the tower , where is father resides , we see the vast city that is full of skyscrapers, flying planes, cars driving on tall roads, and let’s not forget that in the middle of this city is the Tower of Babel , the tallest and biggest skyscraper (18:06-19:13). We must understand that the elite class does not have to pay for there utopia, it is the workers below them that work tirelessly till death to keep the machines running forever , so that the city above can sustain. This rich Utopian world equalizes a permanent dystopia for the working class below , who can’t improve there lifestyle, which eventually causes them to rebel to the surface and destroy the machines.
Throughout the movie , there were a couple of biblical references in movie. The first reference that I spotted was Freder hallucinating that the machine was Molch as the workers were being fed into it. This metaphor means that the workers are working tirelessly to death till the machine explodes and some perish. And we can see that they are being carried away by other workers and replace them in there spot. Molch is the biblical Canaanite god that was worshiped a sacrificial deity . In biblical times , Canaanites would throw there babies into the Molch , the bronze statue that lit ablaze , for sacrifice. The second reference we see was when Freder was in the Cathedral and he sees the statues of the seven deadly sins : Lust ,Gluttony, Pride, Envy ,Wrath, Sloth, Greed (01:08:51). I believe this reference is to the whole city because people commit these sins so much that they are blinded by what goes below the city, which led to the consequences of the workers to rebel to the surface and destroy the machine’s. The last reference I saw was they portray Maria a sinner and saint. Though she is a saint to the workers giving them hope that a mediator would bring the upper and lower classes together, she has doppelganger in a form of a robot that was created by Rotwang, inventor and antagonist . The fake maria is portrayed as the Whore of Babylon( 01:07:28) , which is a reference in the book of Revelation in the bible. Surprisingly, the fake Maria brings leads the rebellion to the surface and destroys the machine, which in comparison to the book of revelations that talk about the apocalypse.
To conclude , I believe the whole point of the movie is to uproot the division , sin and indignation in a futuristic dystopia , which have religious and philosophical themes.
