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“We prefer an ordered world, regular patterns, familiar forms, and when flaws or distortions occur, provided they are not too gross, our mind’s eye tidies them up.  We see what we want or expect to see…we never see the whole of any solid object at any given moment; even to see the whole surface of so simple an object as a sphere, six successive viewpoints are needed…but we except at a single glance that it is a sphere: we complete it on the assumption that it is a consistent shape and the simplest one possible.”

            -Lawrence Wright, Perspective in Perspective (1983)

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) symptomatically wears Expressionist imprints as a product of the Weimar Republic’s reigning ideological mindset.  Modernism, the trunk from which Expressionism branches, raged to its development as an established school of thought in response to modern industrial societies and World War I.  Particularly disillusioned with Enlightenment thinking, Modernism rejects what it understands as neatly constructed fictions masquerading as certain truths.  The Expressionist denomination sought to emphasize the subjective framing of our understandings of the world, doing away with realism and precise physical representations of the world.  Juxtaposing different character’s perspectives, Lang pushes dramatic irony through the mediums of expressionist art and architecture to unveil a solution.  The incomplete perspectives must be fused together to progress towards a better understanding of the truth, or, better yet:

The unrestrictive narrative of Metropolis permits us as audience to assemble a portrait of the entire setting, but the restricted perspectives of each of the individual characters renders their worldviews incomplete.  The workers of the underground industrial sectors know nothing but the dystopic realm in which they endlessly labor.  Their dreary existence fulfills the Expressionist film approach, combining the characters with the setting for a seamless image: the workers themselves move mechanically as if part of the machines. 

Similarly, the perspectives of the regulars at the “Club of Sons” and “The Eternal Gardens” are limited to the utopia that they inhabit.  A stark contrast exists: whereas those below ground are claustrophobically confined to machines, those above ground are released to the vastness of nature and open stadiums.  The lives exist on opposite ends of the spectrum, and each is incomplete and limited to their perspective of the world.  Maria and Freder instigate the widening of perspectives.  The worlds begin to clash when Maria brings malnourished children to the Eternal Gardens and both the elites and working class are astonished by how the other half lives.

Another fascinating point of deviation in perspective is the actress Brigitte Helm.  Not only is the robot made in the likeness of Maria (her main role) to mislead the factory workers, but she is credited as Death, The 7 Deadly Sins, The Creative Man, and the Machine Man.  The inability of the characters to identify the difference between the Marias, or even the existence of two Marias, incites the madness of near-catastrophic proportions.  Depending on the depth of the character’s knowledge at any given point, Maria could resemble a dynamic spectrum of symbols, all of which may be misleading taken individually.

Where Lang’s mindset in Metropolis perhaps deviates from typical Modernist attitudes is that it refuses to abandon preceding perspectives.  Nodding to Bruno Latour, Metropolis refuses to abandon its numerous monsters and insists that they simply need to be introduced to one another.  In the documentary "Voyage to Metropolis," Lang is described to draw from his predecessors in an effective manner that points to his categorization as more of a Latourian compositionist.  He noticeably drew from Expressionist architecture and art, notably the Einstein Tower and Belling's Skulputre 23, but drew from products outside the school of thought, such as the New York skyline and the mythical tower of Babel.  In fact, Lang's reading of the view as he approached the New York Harbor reveals his inspiration for the layered setting: "the building seemed like a vertical curtain, shimmering and weightless, an opulent stage backdrop suspended against a sinister sky in order to dazzle, divert, and hypnotize."  In refusing to break completely from tradition, but to analyze it wholistically, Lang creates a lasting cornerstone in film and all of popular culture:

"Fritz Lang's film collects and intensifies the impulses of his time and then itself works to influence the development of art and architecture."