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BACK TO THE FUTURE
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By Brent Shepherd
Published on May 27, 2009 at 2:02am
Simply stated, Fritz Lang's silent masterpiece Metropolis (1927) is a towering achievement whose shadow looms over all of cinematic science fiction. Never mind that one can draw a straight line from Lang's robot Maria to George Lucas' droid C-3PO — it's impossible to look at such films as Tron, Blade Runner, Brazil, The Matrix and both Tim Burton's and Christopher Nolan's Batman films without acknowledging their debts, both visually and thematically, to Lang's dystopian vision. One wonders, too, whether Charlie Chaplin could have made Modern Times or George Orwell could have written 1984 without a nudge from the German auteur. Hell, Sen. John Edwards' "Two Americas" speech is probably in there somewhere, too. A discussion accompanies today's 5 p.m. screening of Metropolis at the Kansas City Library's Sugar Creek Branch (102 South Sterling), concluding a monthlong retrospective of Lang's life and oeuvre. Admission is free. Call 816-701-3489 for more information.
Sun., May 31, 5 p.m., 2009
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