THE ROLE OF ARCHITECTURE IN THE SCIENCE FICTION MOVIES OF METROPOLIS-THE MATRIX (original) (raw)

The parallel re-reading of the topography of the two urban landscapes portrayed in the Science Fiction movies of Metropolis, Fritz Lang (1927), and The Matrix, Wachowski siblings (1999), highlights the role architecture plays in building part of the symbolic meanings both the movies address about the importance Urban Planning has in relation with the society's development. Specifically, this essay's goal is to target the role of architecture as a system of meanings, whose understandings is helpful in order to meditate on some of the most forward-looking themes that such movies anticipated. The first one chronologically speaking, Fritz Lang's film Metropolis, substantially differs from other science fiction futures displayed at that time, which more deeply reflects an image of people living inside machines or, generically overwhelmed by the new rising technology, pretty much like what happen in Modern Times (1937) where a majestic Charlie Chaplin is slide and transported along and within the new technological superstructures. Soon after, the city as the main object of representation, takes the spotlight of the action and its characteristics are begin to be shown by the director's eye: the point of view being located within the city and its structures and infrastructures, the urban landscape is portrayed focusing on the city's vastness. The ultimate goal of such cinematographic vision is to make the spectators feel as if they are observing the entire system of the place, in this case an urban ecosystem, as it operates. This kind of shot-camera acts in the exactly opposite way than an Earth-from Space images, or a zenithal urban shot from a plane, which both enhances the outside point of view of representation. One famous example of what I am speaking about it is the 9 minutes film directed by the architects Charles and Ray Eames The Power of Ten (1977), in which the outside point of view is specially remarked by the aerial perspective and the further widen of the camera lens, two effects that