Dublin Opinion

We all have in the back of our heads, a nagging list of movies that we really have to see before we can call ourselves cinematically snobbish, albums we must hear before we can call ourselves musically smug, and places we must visit before we can leave our passports lying around for people to see. There are stacks of books in bookshops these days that compile these lists for us - you don’t need to keep the nagging list in your head anymore, you can plonk it on your coffee table instead.

Of course, you’re not actually going to purchase these books until you can confidently point to about, say, at least 30% of the movies, albums, or places listed and regale all and sundry with your first-hand observations. It’s too depressing looking at those lists of 100 places to see before you die, knowing that you haven’t even been to Newgrange. Best to hold off until next year, by which time you might actually have gone somewhere ‘fascinating, darling.’

All of the above is a rather long-winded way of getting around to mentioning that last night I ticked off one more from my list of must-see movies, and in what style!

When the Dublin International Film Festival program was published, I jumped at the chance to sign up for Fritz Lang’s 1927 classic, Metropolis. This black-and-white, silent movie is often spoken of as one of the greats. It’s the original science fiction tale, detailing a dystopian future when the drone workers are confined to an underworld, tending the machines that control the eponymous city above. Meanwhile the leisure classes deport themselves in an earthly paradise high above in the skyscrapers. It’s a morality tale, of course, of evil rulers, mindless mobs, anarchistic revolt, a love story, a demented inventor, and a genuinely dramatic rooftop struggle.

The mass crowd scenes, the views of the city, and the machine rooms put to shame the gazillion dollar CGI movies of today. It’s truly an amazing production. Technically, much of the original footage has been lost, so there are parts that you have to fill in for yourself, aided by the new subtitles.

Metropolis is a representation of how the future used to look - futuristic laboratories complete with spark discharges and flashing lightbulbs; dreary lives of the put-upon simple worker, the complete lack of a middleclass - sharp division between the drone workers and the carefree, leisure classes always with one man behind the scenes running the show. You know the kind of thing - although why is it that they make up all this futuristic stuff (Metropolis even has two-way video conferencing) and then make all the toffs drive around in contemporary 1920s cars and dress up to go out in tops and tails?

What I didn’t realise when I bought the tickets online was that the venue would be the National Gallery and that there would be live musical accompaniment. To be precise, the venue would be the National Gallery’s big hall (the one with all those austere portraits and the massive painting of the marriage of Strongbow and Aoife at one end) with the live music played by Dublin-based collective 3epkano – on electric guitar, drums, as well as more traditional orchestral instruments. The music on the night was a specially commissioned accompaniment to Metropolis, and this night was 3epkano’s first playing of their composition.

I don’t know if there are any plans to make this music available, either as a standalone CD or as a DVD in conjunction with the movie, but in the meantime this group have an album of other music-for-classic-films available in lovely old Road Records. Back in the day, silent movies often had live musical accompaniment in the theatre, so this was a return to that. I doubt, however, that any of the original audience for this film would ever have heard anything like the math-rock quiet-loud-quiet controlled score boomed out in the stately confines of the gallery room of the National Gallery. Think Mogwai’s music for the Zidane film, with a string section, all right there, live in front of you.

So, was it all any good? Well, as the end credits rolled there was rapturous applause for the movie, and as the last strains of the music faded, there was a second round of sustained applause for the musicians. Going to the Multiplex this was not.