Metropolis

A Japanese animated film. The city is layered. People live on the upper levels; the further down you go the darker it gets, and at the bottom are working robots and people who have lost their jobs. Robots may not come up; the rule is strict and breaking it means destruction. A detective arrives in the city with his nephew. They are looking for a scientist known to be running illegal experiments. A fire breaks out in the laboratory. The nephew finds a girl in the wreckage. Tima does not know what she is. From there the film is a flight. The two go down and move through the underside of the city; above, the man who runs it is looking for this girl, because he had her made for a purpose. The second line is revolt. The workers below have lost their work to robots and the anger has built. What the narrative is interested in is not technology but class: the city describes inequality as architecture, and the film keeps giving that through the image. The source is Osamu Tezuka's comic; Katsuhiro Otomo wrote the screenplay. The visual style is mixed: the characters are round and come from an older drawing tradition, while the city is detailed computer imagery. Setting the two side by side is deliberate. Jazz is used in the last section, and the sequence of destruction runs with that music; it is the most remembered part of the film. Rintaro directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes the classic anime tradition and science fiction cities. Who it is not for: anyone looking for depth of character; the narrative is built on an idea and the people are secondary.