Metropia

source: Metropia

can't quite understand the negative reviews on this movie. yes, the animation isn't 'high tone' but the story line will keep you glued to the movie. the other more positive reviewers have finely analyzed and explained this short movie so i will not repeat their efforts. but i do suggest to give this most unusual film a look. there are some weak spots in the story but as a whole it all works! it's different in look and atmosphere and isn't that what movie buffs seek out. please don't approach this little gem of a movie expecting a wow wee in special effects. that's not what it's about. i believe the director is making a subtle comment on our times.

So first of all: In general I am a big fan of low-budget and small films. I think thats where the real passion is. And Metroia really was a one-man-thing. At least that what I took from it. So there is a pretty impressive achievement here. No doubt. I respect that. I like that. So it kinda hurts me that I have to say that Metropia would have been a better short film then a feature. It sometimes just dragged. And not in a moody or artistic way (dont worry, I am all in for Tarkovsky and Co) but just with spans of scenes that are not interesting. You can argue that a certain kind of monotony helps you understand the character better. I guess thats correct. But there was still a little underwhelming taste in the end.

I love the look of this movie. It looks like they took photographs, made the heads bigger than the body and the eyes bigger than they should be and animated the result. It is purposely non-fluid and wonderfully conveys a grim, claustrophobic quality. I also thought the basic premise was cool, but I'm going to put in a spoiler section to complain about how little sense it made, ultimately. ********* SPOILER SECTION BELOW ************ In the movie, the protagonist hears a voice speaking paranoid thoughts. For example, it tells him his girlfriend might be cheating on him. But he doesn't feel they are his own thoughts. Is he going crazy? It's a cool idea, and it's cool to discover that as a matter of fact he is not going crazy; a corporation has developed a shampoo that allows operatives to use people's brain for communicating and receiving, meaning you can see what is happening in someone's life and comment on it through a microphone that broadcasts into their brain. That's awesome, but here's the problem: why is the guy on the microphone telling the protagonist his girlfriend is cheating on him and other paranoid thoughts? He's not a sadist, so he's not just doing it to be mean. Presumably this is his job. But it appears that the shampoos purpose is actually for mind control, to convince people to buy certain products or vote certain ways, so how is this goal achieved? The filmmakers seem to have liked the idea of someone broadcasting paranoid thoughts into someone else's brain to the point where they didn't care if it made any sense in terms of the story, and that annoyed me. But I still thought it was a cool movie.

Most of you are familiar with Jib-Jab--the comedy site that uses WEIRD animations for greeting cards and comedy clips. It's a very peculiar and distorted style you just have to see to understand. Well, with the film "Metropia", it looks like someone used the Jib-Jab software to make a feature-length movie. So, you have a BIZARRE sort of CGI with strange, jerky animation--animation that is very, very gray and dark as well. Trying to explain what I saw in "Metropia" is very, very difficult. The film is just plain weird and the plot is beyond words...but I'll try. It's set in a dystopic Europe in 2024. Everything is gray and muted...and oppressive. All the cities of Europe have become connected through their subways and everything seems dull and mirthless. The hero, or at least the main character, is a bald guy named Roger. He begins hearing voices in his head and you later learn that it's caused by a shampoo marketed by some evil corporation. None of it makes the least bit of sense and it seems like a look inside the mind of a paranoid schizophrenic. He has some odd adventures and meets an odd woman who he's not sure whether to trust or not--but he's hypnotically drawn to her. The film is filled with adult language and nudity. However, the nudity is among the least sexy nudity I've ever seen--practically as appealing as elderly *! The people are distorted, strange and unattractive and seeing them * is just icky. Because of this, you might want to think twice before showing this to your kids or mother! As far as the overall product goes, it is an interesting experiment--but an unappealing one as well. The film is completely bereft of energy and fun and is an endurance contest to finish. Not pleasant but innovative...and creepy. This one has practically no commercial appeal and is just plain odd... By the way, Stalingrad Station is in Paris, if you really care.

So. Metropia. Well, I really wanted to like this film. I love science fiction, especially intelligent science fiction, but Metropia does not cut it. I didn't like the flat, one dimensional way they did the CGI, but that's just me. They wanted to try something different and it didn't work for me. However, I didn't find the whole thing visually interesting. The grayish, sepia tones helped establish the mood of the film, but too much of anything can become monotonous. In the first 'Alien' there's an undercurrent of dread, even before anyone dies, but the lighting changes depending on what part of the ship they're in. Even '1984' changes lighting more often! The dialogue is good, but hardly remarkable. The main character didn't evoke much sympathy. He's a bit TOO much of a schlump. Too much of an everyman to be interesting. The voices in his head do a good job of confusing him and the audience. Are they actual voices, or is he slowly losing his mind? However, that too is a bit confusing. And not in a good way. It turns out the corporation, run by an old, crusty, almost decrepit old businessman is in fact monitoring us all. They are feeding us instructions when we stray from the path of conformity and obedience. However, we don't learn to what end. It wasn't clear what they wanted to accomplish. If that was mentioned anywhere in the film, it was not clear. And to me, that's poor storytelling. I rented this on a Friday night, got about 45 minutes in and fell asleep. Never a good sign in a movie. A movie can be slow paced, but there still has to be dramatic tension. Or suspense. This movie did not have it. Of course, I should realize; any movie Vincent Gallo's involved in is going to plod along unbelievably slowly. The premise is good. The average person needing to wake up and not be controlled by corporations or advertising or whatever, is a good idea. I give the movie credit for what it attempts, even though it's been done many times before. However, the execution of this idea was pretty poor. Kind of like when the blonde tries to alert the protagonist to the danger and get him to help her. She tries to seduce him, unfortunately in her underwear instead of completely *. (And since there was nudity earlier, the movie didn't hold back to be a nice PG film.)If she'd approached him stark naked, he might have found her impossible to resist. She too had a good idea, but it was very poorly executed.

The film uses an animation technique not unlike a photographic quality South Park. That technique is visually interesting but eventually cripples the narrative because no one can move very fast or even effectively turn their heads. Everyone seems to be wearing a neck brace. And in the few "action" sequences, characters only shuffle a little more quickly than usual, like crabs rushing from the next wave. The dialog is particularly frustrating. The characters in this movie are determined not to convey any information with words. You might as well watch without the sound because no one is able to construct a complete sentence. The protagonist in particular stumbles over his words in a way that just gets tedious after a while. There are really no significant science fiction ideas either. The film ends where it began. It's a shame too because the performances are fine, and obviously a lot of work went into the animation. But there was nothing here for me. And since I put in my 2 hours, I'm compelled to tell others that it was wasted in my opinion.

I have watched this move on a hint, haven't expected it to be much, but in the end it turned out swell. The atmosphere created and the style of the movie is excellent. I have really enjoyed it, as it is not heavy, but more tranquil-food-for-thought kind of movie. The number of allegories in the movie is overwhelming, and there are many connections with how the society functions today. The low ratings for this movie are almost certainly there because of the complexity of the work, not because it is bad. Getting to IMDb it immediately reminded me about Aronofsky's Fountain, which had (and still has) sub par user rating compared to the quality of the work. I think that Metropia is worthwhile and enjoyable work, and can recommend it.

"Metropia" certainly wasn't no "Metropolis", nor was it worthy of being compared to "1984", either. Metaphorically speaking, I found "Metropia" to be the sort of movie that began at a severe disadvantage with it already having one foot planted firmly in the grave. And, then, from that point it basically buried itself so deeply in its own bleak blandness that it inevitably rendered itself completely and forgettably dead. Not only was Metropia's style of CG animation very difficult to get used to (it was saturated with exceedingly grubby and ugly imagery), but, its story never succeeded in getting anywhere near to being in the least bit interesting, nor thought-provoking. And, besides that, at an almost unendurable 86-minute running time, Metropia certainly turned out to be a brutal test of my patience. This was the sort of film where virtually nothing happened, and, so, with that, it could've easily been edited down to, say, 25 minutes and its final product wouldn't have suffered one bit. But, hey, if you, yourself, greatly enjoy animated, Sci-Fi stories where the characters all seem to come across as being a collective bunch of nondescript schlumps (and, even the sex scenes are schlumpy and not worth paying much attention to), then, yes, perhaps Metropia is the right movie for you. Set in a dysfunctional, European society of the future (like, as though Europe wasn't dysfunctional enough already), Metropia tells the wishy-washy tale about giant, evil corporations who are seriously manipulating its gullible citizens with consumer products (like shampoo) that contain mind-controlling chemicals which turn them into mindlessly obedient drones who never feel the need to question anything. And, after seeing Metropia, if you come to the conclusion that its story has a decidedly "been there/seen that" familiarity to it, then you are so right. It does. I found it really hard to believe that this film's budget was a whopping $32 million. Boy, I'm telling you, there was absolutely nothing about Metropia's final product that even hinted at the word "expensive". It all looked pretty cheap to me.

My subject line says it all. The film has an interesting animation style that kept me guessing, is it photography plus animation? Is it some incredibly realistic computer graphics plus obviously-animated human figures? But apart from some mild interest in the mechanics I found it overwhelmingly dull. It was quite derivative - as others have mentioned here, it was reminiscent of Blade Runner, with a 1984 theme. It also did not make a lick of sense. Despite some blather about the society being oil depleted etc. it was not clear how that related to anything, and it seemed to be about the evils of corporate capitalism controlling the political system (or something) but at the same time this evil entity seemed to be forcing people into very un-materialistic living standards. So it many have had socially critical points to make but they were made in a nonsensical way with lots of borrowing from far better fare.