The Martlet

Metropole, a documentary following the lives of a handful of individuals from Seattle as they course through leisure, work and home life, was exhibited at Open Space on Sept. 25, at the Anti-Matter Film Festival.

The festival ran from Sept. 19 to 27, its 10th aniversay in Victoria, continuing a tradition of screening art-based cinema.

The specific Seattleites in the hour-long documentary ranged all across the social spectrum, differing in aspects of race, income and age. Metropole is presented without any conventional dialogue, and peeks into familiar experiences are given by images and the occasional title card. Not only does Metropole avoid dialogue, it desperately strays away from any subjectivity on the part of the characters. The rare bits of speaking are lost; blurred out in the in the sounds of the city. At the same time, the squishy sound of a knife slicing through soft cheese comes through astonishingly clear. The effect is a total objective glimpse into the familiar elements of day-to-day living.

The film was described by the Anti-matter film festival as a documentary about social class, and indeed it may be. The film chronicled small differences in everyday life between characters of varying wealth, especially as shown through food (which the film seems to have a preoccupation with).

However, viewers may soon become aware that the different experiences of every day life are more cosmetic than social; a product of personal taste and age rather than any kind of social disparity. The range of social classes explored through the film is limited — all characters belong between varying extremes of middle-class.

Although it’s not really expected of the art film genre, the overt familiarity in this collection of everyday moments gets a bit boring. As much as it tried, the soundtrack and cinematography doesn’t go far to pique interest in watching a sandwich being made.

The film made an attempt at trying to portray the reality of an urban landscape, which it does well, but it doesn’t manage to let individual uniqueness stand out. There were a few moments (such as an affluent, older couple’’s house built in the wilderness with retractable stairs leading from the carport to the porch) that added an element of individuality, but on closer inspection, their house is filled with things that one might pick up at any Home Outfitters store.

This all raises the question of what the filmmakers were trying to say by creating this film — they barely scratched the surface of social class, and the flick fails to capture meaningful quirkiness.

Yet there is something else to this film. The write-up from Anti-Matter plainly states that it’s a documentary about social class, despite the fact that the film completely ignores the two extremes of the social spectrum.

However, the way the images move with the soundtrack allows glimpses of poetic creativity, and some shots had a quaint simplicity, one of the film’s saving graces and why some may have enjoyed it over the more surreal, quirky films in the festival.

There was no feeling of violent rebellion against mainstream cinema or savage deconstruction of conventions. It appeared as nothing more than a total objective invasion of a few people’s lives.