METOROPORISU
METOROPORISU (Metropolis)
May 1 2010, Netflix Instant Watch, home living room
My day of lumping around, forcing myself to stay home and turn my brain down to a simmer, included watching this animated melding of both Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS and the gigantic sprawling manga by Osamu Tekuza that was inspired by a glimpse of the movie's poster. It's a weird one. Yes, very visually beautiful (and it must have been mind-blowing when it first came out, but these days the occasionally chunky CGI is awkward), with a relatively engaging story with lots of food for thought tucked in, but METROPOLIS is also a unclear, uneven slog of a movie. I place at least most of the blame on the constant, extremely jaunty 1920s-style jazz playing throughout, which adds a jarringly chipper tone to a very dark, sad, tragic story of familial alienation, lost humanity, corruption, and madness. It kind of sucks even more that the music is really great, and I'd love to hear it in a different context. Also, and maybe this is just me, the Tekuza character design style, with its apple-cheeked thick-legged youngsters, grownups with playfully exaggerated features like hook noses and ridiculous mustaches, and those adorable shiny round-toed shoes, clashes unpleasantly with the linear, metallic, mechanised style of the settings. It just doesn't come together well.
Interesting story, though. Oh well; I'm a philistine, and maybe I should just read the original manga.
Another note: one of the tertiary characters is voiced by the same voice actor who provided the English-language dub of Cowboy Bebop's Spike Spiegel, one of the only illustrated characters I've ever fallen in love with, and boy, was it jarring to hear Spike's voice coming out of some other character. I'll have to be careful in the future.
May 1 2010, Netflix Instant Watch, home living room
My day of lumping around, forcing myself to stay home and turn my brain down to a simmer, included watching this animated melding of both Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS and the gigantic sprawling manga by Osamu Tekuza that was inspired by a glimpse of the movie's poster. It's a weird one. Yes, very visually beautiful (and it must have been mind-blowing when it first came out, but these days the occasionally chunky CGI is awkward), with a relatively engaging story with lots of food for thought tucked in, but METROPOLIS is also a unclear, uneven slog of a movie. I place at least most of the blame on the constant, extremely jaunty 1920s-style jazz playing throughout, which adds a jarringly chipper tone to a very dark, sad, tragic story of familial alienation, lost humanity, corruption, and madness. It kind of sucks even more that the music is really great, and I'd love to hear it in a different context. Also, and maybe this is just me, the Tekuza character design style, with its apple-cheeked thick-legged youngsters, grownups with playfully exaggerated features like hook noses and ridiculous mustaches, and those adorable shiny round-toed shoes, clashes unpleasantly with the linear, metallic, mechanised style of the settings. It just doesn't come together well.
Interesting story, though. Oh well; I'm a philistine, and maybe I should just read the original manga.
Another note: one of the tertiary characters is voiced by the same voice actor who provided the English-language dub of Cowboy Bebop's Spike Spiegel, one of the only illustrated characters I've ever fallen in love with, and boy, was it jarring to hear Spike's voice coming out of some other character. I'll have to be careful in the future.