How far is Metropolis' narrative unconventional?

By applying ideas about narrative from theorists, discuss how far the German Expressionist or French New Wave film you have studied can be considered an unconventional narrative. [35]

- Metropolis

Fritz Lang's 1927 film 'Metropolis', under its expressionistic façade, displays a simplistic narrative of which many theories such as Chris Vogler's 'hero's journey', Levi Strauss' 'binary-oppositions', Todorov's 5-stage narrative, and Propp's character functions, can be applied. Despite this conventionally linear narrative structure, Metropolis exhibits an emphasis on the expressionistically externalised narrative themes, ideas, and discourse as contextually influenced by the insecurities and culturally shifted landscape of Weimar Germany; notably narrative explorations of a psychological, religious, occult, and socio-political nature. Such narrative approaches, it can be argued, makes Metropolis, as is the instance for its German Expressionist contemporaries, unconventional.

Marxist overtones dominate the exposition, with Lang presenting Levi-Strauss binary oppositions in the segregated divisions of the upper and lower class of the city. The workers, objectified as 'hands', in their rhythmic drudgery to and from 10 hours of work, connote a perpetual misery of their exploited labour, the compositionally dividing arch above in their introductory wide shot likened to a mouth, a foreshadowing to the coming vision of 'Moloch'. In the machine halls, protagonist and Proppian hero Freder hallucinates the 'heart machine' as the Biblical, sacrificial god 'Moloch' which the workers must feed with their own flesh in a hellish representation of the overwhelming control of technology over human labour, with expressionistic special effects of steam rising from the machine. Through the excess of, the machine's scale, the choreographed mechanisation of the working class identity, and the chaotic agency of technology in the opening montage paralleled in the chaotic non-diegetic instrumentation, it becomes meaningless. Lang in a Marxist allusion to a class-warfare story as Freder proposes an eventual uprising of the workers to his father- the 'head' and conceiver of Metropolis - presents conventional narrative ideas through Strauss oppositions, though unconventionally neither division is made desirable: the city of metropolis is both abhorred and glorified through the juxtaposition of the hellish machine halls to the triumphant montage of the city, with painted impossibilities of perspectives in the futuristic skyscrapers and brassy triumphant music accompanying the 'new tower of Babel', framed and situated in the centre of the city with glorifying lights highlighting its economic and modernised achievement. This is made horrific in the exploitative horrors of those who built and continue to maintain this below, of whom become a chaotic and menacing force when easily roused by the man-machine, destroying themselves. This interest is perhaps influenced by the rapid urbanisation of Germany, the simultaneous cultural prosperity and future fears of mechanisation and urbanisation explored by Lang. 

Increasingly after act 1, the moral of the epigram, 'the mediator between the head and hands must be the heart' is realised as Metropolis is steered in a much more mythic and allegorical route. Though the Vogler 'hero's journey' continues through Freder, such as his descent into the 'unknown world' of the workers, his trials in operating the machine, his enemies in the realisation of his father's corruptive power, and his 'ordeal' of madness in an expressionistic montage - with flashes of hand-drawn light, rapid editing of double-exposed images of his fears, and falling against darkness connoting the descent into the depths of his mind -, such a conventional narrative structure paralleling Todorov's equilibrium, disruption, acknowledgment, repair, and new equilibrium, is permeated with an overt multitude of religious iconography. Maria, as Freder's 'call to adventure' and 'disruption', functions as both the maternal Virgin Mary and John the Baptist as she preaches in the archaic catacombs to the workers, with Barthes symbolic codes used in an expressionistic array of Christian crosses, candles, and drapery in costume, a symbolic passing of light passing over Freder's close-up face as the realised Messianic saviour of the 'hands'. This is juxtaposed to the 'whore of Babylon', the Satanic man-machine constructed under an inverted pentagram, framed from low-angles as it dances provocatively in the 'Yoshiwara' club to construct villainy, whose existence opposes natural creation. Such imagery examples the German Expressionist interest in the religious, spiritual, and occult as the art during Germany's republic underwent rapid cultural change after the Great War, with a rejection of traditional art forms like Prussian art that emphasised militarism, strength, and authority. Thus, the German expressionist aesthetic functions as the chaotic, unhinged, and subjective opposite, these ideas existing within the narratives of expressionist cinema. Leaders of the Weimar Republic encouraged a spiritual rebirth to lay the foundations for Germany's 'return to greatness', these concerns explored through religious expressionistic imagery in Metropolis. Significantly, Freder as the Messianic 'mediator', his call of, 'father will 10 hours never end!' as he operates a machine, parallel to Christ's call to God, 'father, why hast though forsaken me?'; the tower of Babel sequence as an allegorical foreshadowing of Metropolis' uprising and destruction, the 'new tower of babel' situated in the city centre the overt parallel, its architectural crown connoting Christ's crown of thorns perhaps illustrating the sacrifice and suffering of those workers who built it; and Fredersen, alluded as the Proppian villain when Metropolis functioned as a Marxist dystopian story, as the literal 'god' and creator of Metropolis, his function unconventionally shifted once Rotwang - and by extension his robotic creation - exists as the antagonist to Freder's hero's journey. 

Therefore, though Metropolis is largely simplistic and conventional in its narrative structure, its symbolic codes, ideas, and mythic narrative themes as exampled in its character archetypes and expressionistic aesthetics, are unconventional and function as an expression of the concerns, culture, and landscape of Weimar Germany.