I recently asked a New Yorker if he had watched I am Legend (2007). His reply was that since 9/11, he has had no desire to watch any film that deals with the destruction of his city. While I am Legend didn’t draw obvious parallels to that fateful day seven years ago, it is however difficult to miss them in Cloverfield and to consequently not feel at times slightly uncomfortable at the sight of people dying and being trapped in situations in which they have absolutely no control over their fate.

Cloverfield is an old-fashioned 1950’s monster flick (see my post on sci-fi/horror and the city) that draws heavily on current filmmaking and social trends, especially in its depiction of a YouTube/Facebook need to document and share everything about one’s self, one’s experiences, even possibly about one’s death (everything leading up to death that is, which is clearly a lot more voyeuristic and contemporary than wanting to document what happens after death, which was the premise of the 80’s film Brainstorm (1983)). The Blair Witch Project (1999) had already caught on to these ‘self-documenting’ trends years ago, and as such, proved to be a groundbreaking film. Cloverfield, on the other hand, can only rehash what has been done before, and puts the documenting so much in the foreground that it often takes away from the believability of some of the scenes. It feels too much that the story is built around the idea of documenting whereas in The Blair Witch Project documenting was more seamlessly integrated into a solid narrative. In addition, the intensity and the wobbliness of the camera movements, while effective for the most part, can sometimes be confusing and even tiring.

Yet, Cloverfield also manages to keep us on the edge of our seat and to deliver an overall intense, and at times, frightening experience. The first half of the movie is the most effective since we are left guessing as to what exactly is terrorizing the city. One of the many things that Alien (1979) taught us (its impact on the horror/sci-fi genre has been inestimable) is that one can probably create more tension and suspense by showing less and by letting the potent powers of the imagination do the visualizing, which is most often based on one’s worst fears. Once we have become acquainted with the monster(s) of Cloverfied, the film starts to lose some of its pace and power, a fact reinforced by the increasing silliness of the protagonists’ decision-making. But a nice twist in the last ten minutes saves us from the unexpected dreadful and predictable ending.

In the end, running at a short 85 minutes, Cloverfield turns out to be a decently enjoyable viewing experience that is clearly in a higher league than recent monster films and remakes such as the dreadful Godzilla (1998).

…Equilibrium can only rehash themes already explored in 1984, Fahrenheit 451 and THX 1138. It portrays a future where knowledge and individual thinking are forbidden and are controlled through brainwashing propaganda and drug taking. What is interesting about this film however, is its representation of the authoritarian and totalitarian city. Shot in various locations in Berlin (Olympic Stadium, Postdamer Platz) as well as in Rome, the film’s production design is clearly heavily influenced by Nazi and Fascist architecture. The city of Equilibrium is one that is dominated by order, symmetry (seen throughout the ages as an indication of harmony), and monumental, bare and functional buildings, in the Rohbau style that was so favoured by Hitler and his architect Albert Speer. The bland, smooth, and characterless surfaces of these buildings relies on brick and granite for their effect, echoing Hilter’s words in 1937 that “‘only the great cultural documents of humanity made of granite and marble’ offer stability and certainty…” , and result in effigies whose main purpose it is to lower Man’s sense of individuality. In addition, the citizens of the city tend to gather in open plazas and squares (of rather classicists designs) for worship and meditation, an architectural, urban planning and propaganda stratagem that was at the core of the design of the city of Berlin in the 1930s.

Excerpt from Architectural Representations of the City in Science Fiction Cinema.

Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451, based on Bradburry’s novel of the same name, seems to exist outside of the standard city space. More reminiscent of a modern city’s inner suburbs, the architecture on display is eclectic and often cold and lacking humanity.

As with Godard’s Alphaville, the low budget of Fahrenheit 451 meant that all exterior scenes were shot on location (Maidenhead, UK). Truffaut evidently selected buildings that epitomized 1950s and 1960s urban planning gone wrong. The apartment block or tower no longer carries hope of an urban renaissance and as a solver of society’s problems.

Instead, it is portrayed as lacking beauty and humanity, a vertical cage in which to house the less privileged, and, in the context of the film, the non-conformists and dissidents.

Excerpt from Architectural Representations of the City in Science Fiction Cinema.

Godard’s Alphaville, shot on a very low budget in 1965 Paris, is the director’s take on Orwell’s 1984, capitalism, modernism and the eradication of free will through rationality and efficiency.

The city, beautifully shot by Raoul Coultard, is turned into a cold, modernist island where buildings of glass and concrete stand as an effigy to science and dehumanization. Most of the scenes are shot in modernist interiors and exteriors, which could have been designed by Le Corbusier himself. But Godard’s vision turns the modernist dream upside down and associates the architecture with the end of free will and the disappearance of non-conformity.

Unlike Lang’s vision of an ultra-modernist city of the future, with its skyscrapers reaching for the sky, Godard’s Alphaville is more spread out and few very tall buildings emerge. The elite continues to live in different areas of the city from the ‘little’ people, but the boundaries are less clearly defined and the sense of height as an association of power seems to dominate less than in Metropolis or even Things to Come. A man of his time, Godard seems to have been able to anticipate post-modernist concerns towards architecture and the city.

Excerpt from Architectural Representations of the City in Science Fiction Cinema.

Just Imagine, strongly influenced by Hugh Ferriss’s book, Metropolis of Tomorrow (1929), takes the archetype vision of the future city as defined by a Manhattan-like skyline, and portrays it in all its beauty and majesty. Ferris was America’s most celebrated architectural conjurer of ideal cities of the future and saw in the skyscraper city the ideal form of utopic betterment.

As with High Treason, the city of Just Imagine is buzzing with activity, lights and motion. Cars are everywhere and walkways and bridges saturate the entire skyline. Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies states that ‘where Metropolis seems inspired by lower Manhattan, with its angular streets and closely packed towers, Just Imagine’s city suggests midtown, its layout of buildings and avenues more regular and widely spaced’ . Indeed, while its skyscrapers, some of which seem to grow on top of existing structures and buildings, reach high in the sky, the space and airy feel that exists inside the city reminds us that this film (also inspired by the work of the Italian Futurist Antonio Sant’Elia) is overall quite positive and optimistic in its outlook.

Excerpt from Architectural Representations of the City in Science Fiction Cinema.

In Code 46, Michael Winterbottom sends mixed messages about the city of the very near future. On the one hand, the effective cinematography captures beautiful images of Shanghai, London and Dubai to create a post-modernist and exotic view of the city that blends concerns for overpopulation and the impact of technology on individual freedom with a sense of acceptance and beauty towards the alienation created by the modern city. And on the other hand, the lead protagonists are shown to escape to a more ‘rural’ and primitive lifestyle, filling the narrative with a sense of nostalgia for a past when less was available but men were more free.

In the process, the film distorts space completely by mixing shots of various cities to give the impression of another (Hong Kong is Seattle) and by inserting spaces of desert where there should be none, portraying Shanghai as an overcrowded, fenced-in island surrounding by a sea of waste lands. The end result, which feels at times like a music video, portrays the city in a fragmented and ephemeral way, but with enough respect that the problems discussed in the film and the blame associated seem to somehow be shifted away from the city. The city is no longer responsible, simply the place where man’s experiments and the inevitable journey of progress occur.

Excerpt from Architectural Representations of the City in Science Fiction Cinema.

This is a series of answers by various thinkers from all around the globe who were invited to The Table of Free Voices, a dropping knowledge (the NGO i work for) initiative that took place in Berlin, Germany on September 9th, 2006.

Mohammed Arkoun

It’s a scary future if you think about cities like Mexico City or Cairo, which are approaching 17 million habitants or more. But the infrastructures of these very old cities, especially Cairo, Bombay, Karachi or Jakarta, etc. are still the same as they were at the beginning of the 20th century in some districts. And the actual city policy is far from considering the new problems of urban areas and the pressures on urban areas. The cities are becoming a place of confrontation, a place where the collective memory disintegrates, a place of social ruptures, a place where frustration accumulates, where people backtrack to their individual level or to the level of a group what we fearfully call communitarianism which becomes more and more important in urban areas, and not only in rural areas as it was before.

Read more »

Film architecture and design has existed almost as long as cinema itself. In 1976, Leon Barsacq argued in Caligari’s Cabinet And Other Grand Illusions that the fantasist sets developed by Georges Melies at the beginning of the 20th century were a considerable improvement over anything that had been done previously in that they created a deeper reality and gave the image a more substantial meaning. He further added that cinema escaped its primitive phase once it moved away from simple backdrops to three-dimensional sets, thereby creating an architectural space within cinema[1].

Read more »

Things to Come is a masterpiece of British Cinema. Based on H.G Wells’ story The Shape of Things to Come, it offers a utopian vision of the future filled with ideas and concepts that, in spite of the fact that we now know that some of these propositions were naive, are staggering in their seriousness and realization.

Often to the dismay and irritation of the cast and crew, Wells was involved in all aspects of the production of Things to Come. This is a project that was very close to his heart and he was keen on making sure that the result would be an appropriate visualization of his ideas and values. Previous screen adaptations of his work had left him unimpressed (First Men in the Moon 1919, The Island of Lost Souls 1932 and The Invisible Man 1933, among others), branding them as amateurish works. Yet, he maintained an admiration and respect for the cinematic medium and saw Things to Come as the opportunity of a lifetime (especially that he was nearing 70 at that time).
Read more »