In the proposals which describe utopian constructions envisioned by philosophers, utopian socialists and writers alike, the uniformity of the needs, assertions and believes of each utopia’s members is considered as a given. Uniformity takes away personal expression, multiplicity and difference, essential elements of life as well as of creative expression(1), granting priority to the interests of the majority in the name of equality and justice. The determinism of this assertion as well as its inevitable bankruptcy has served as a starting point for the majority of dystopian films. Fiction films, such as Metropolis , Brazil and The Island , are commented below in relation to the architectural environments represented
in them, the ideological basis of their choices and the timeliness of the dystopian visions which they put forward.
According to Maria Luise Bernieri: “Utopians tend to forget that society is a living organism and that its organization must be an expression of life and not just a dead structure”(2) . The paternalistic monomania of utopian visions becomes a leitmotiv in fiction films describing dystopia, which demand that their members show flexibility and adaptability to an established social structure and a political organization.
The monumental and the modern
A starting point for the following filmic dystopias is the belief that material and technological innovations will abolish everyday life as we know it and upgrade all aspects of living. For the end of the nineteenth century this belief was symbolised by the faith in the machine(3),in the late twentieth century this was replaced by the faith in digital technology and later in biotechnology.
In the movie Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1928), the vision of the manipulation of the machine for the progress of humankind is reversed. Workers in the underground city are the components of machinery that was designed to improve their lives. The city’s privileged class entertains itself in the city’s penthouses, a city taken out of the futuristic visions of Antonio Sant'Elia, a pioneer of the movement which embraced the machine as a symbol of progress and prosperity. Sant'Elia’s “City of Tomorrow” (1914) is a massive factory, an architecture of the industrial era, a machine-city. The same city is admired by Le Corbusier in the juxtaposition of illustrations of Grain elevators aside those of historical monuments, in his book Towards a New Architecture(4) .What's more "the time that Metropolis is being filmed, Bauhaus is situated in Dessau, Le Corbusier has presented his plan for Paris and the Empire State Building is under construction”(5).Additionally the above-ground city possesses something of the “noir” atmosphere of the two-dimensional metropolis of the monumental illustrations of Hugh Ferriss for New York. Ferriss, although an architect himself, became renowned in the 1920s, not for the buildings he designed, but for the perspective drawings of works of other architects, as well as for his deductive interpretations of the laws of "zoning" for New York. The development of a particular style which included monumental scale as well as and dark and dramatic atmosphere gave his black and white representations this uncanny, yet strangely attractive element.
Metropolis, however, as Triantafyllou attests, is, among others, a reflection of European fears in the early twentieth century(6).The pretext of classicism as architectural morphology and, through it, the hypocritical identification with ancient Greek culture as well as with the splendour of ancient Rome, become the tools of architectural expression for fascism. The magnificent, the monumental and the imposing, as well as contempt for human scale, exemplify totalitarian architectural visions of the emerging leaders of pre-war Europe.
The failure of modernity
In the movie Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985), the hero lives a grey and monotonous reality, amidst terrorist bombings by the "Resistance". Bureaucracy rules the world of Brasilia, a world where the hero tries to
pass unnoticed, finding refuge only in his dreams where he appears as an angel and meets his beloved. He encounters her later in real life, when she tries, in the midst of bureaucratic chaos, to protest
against the violent arrest of her neighbour as a result of human error, in fact a typographical error in the typing of the arrest warrant.
In Brazil, the mechanized everyday fails to deliver what it has promised:comfort, convenience and time saving. Domestic gadgets malfunction, bureaucracy commits mistakes and networks create a chaotic public and private space. Networks of water, heating and communications shape an intricate patchwork, taken out of the post-apocalyptic Walking City (1964) of Archigram. The stage design and commentary of the film though is closer to pop futuristic illustrations of this English architectural group of the sixties. The scenography of the film consists of an eclectic sample of the thirties and forties, while posters of the Ministry of Information copy propaganda posters of World War II. The Ministry of Information in Brazil, designed with Art Deco elements consistent with the overall retro atmosphere of the film, clearly references the iconography and architecture of fascism in Europe, in the footsteps of the pioneering Metropolis (see for example “Tempelhof Airport” in Berlin, 1935-39). The monitoring, the recording of personal data and a set of laws and rules for even the smallest detail of everyday life, make up an authoritarian controlling state. The optimistic fantasy of a total and rationalistic organisation of life in Brazil collapses because of what it did not leave place for: randomness, difference and the personal.
The panopticon of the future
Absolute control through rationalization is one of the issues commented on The Island (Michael Bay, 2005), a film placed in a postapocalyptic time in the future. Survivors of a worldwide contamination have been transferred to an underground site where they are treated, educated and live communally, waiting for the lottery in order to go to “the island”, the only uncontaminated spot of earth. As revealed during the movie, no catastrophe has preceded, but instead the residents of the facility are clones of people of the "outside" world who have paid for the clones’ creation in order to use them as “spare parts”. The smooth operation of the facility is disturbed when it becomes evident that clones have developed memories, self-consciousness and will, fully human characteristics. The Island, like Gattaca(7) (Andrew Niccol, 1997), comment on the replacement of faith for the salvation of mankind with the new religion: science.
Notes:
1 Characteristically, in the beginning of films such as Equilibrium (Kurt Wimmer,
2002), the destruction of a work of art takes place, art symbolising the past, decadence and human weakness.
2 Maria Luise Bernieri, A Journey through utopia, Skopelos: Nisides, 1999 (first edition: 1950), p. 286.
3 See for example the proposal for a “Linear City” by Soria y Mata (1882) or “Industrial City” by Tony Garnier (1917).
4 Le Corbusier, Towards a new Architecture, London: The Architectural Press, 1976 (first edition 1927).
5 S. Triantafyllou, Filmed Cities, Athens: Modern Era, 1990.
6 Ibid, p. 98.
7 In the film Gattaca, eugenics have given birth to humans designed with optimum characteristics and planned excellence while non-genetically programmed births bring into the world "invalids”, representing the lowest caste of untouchables of the future.
An earlier version of this article was presented during the conference
“Utopias, Eutopias, Dystopias” in the University of Western Macedonia,
School of Fine and Applied Arts.
Source Document HERE
