Light as a reflection of dystopic culture:

Beyond the sensation of fear that low-key lighting generates, light in films are used in much more complex ways to reveal geographical, societal and cultural conditions.  Light has the ability to orient space, by creating tactile feelings through the embellishment of atmospheric and physical textures.  It is used to orient time – the day, the season, the period.   Light, combined with weather and landscape can establish geographical locations.  Painters such as Johanne Vermeer and Casper David Freidrich produced works that celebrated their country’s light and landscapes. Vermeer painted soft atmospheric Northern European light through doorways and windows, while Friedrich painted hauntingly beautiful stretches of ice and skies under Nordic light.  In dystopic films, these comforting facets of light are deconstructed and made to do the opposite; thus, light is used to disorient space and time.  It establishes the unpleasantness of an environment, reveals the ugliness of objects, and disrupts visual continuity.  “Metropolis” was a black and white film that used light as a cultural symbol to reveal the dystopic society where its citizens are polarized into working class and upper class.  The workers’ world is shrouded in darkness, with jolts of bright light given off by the machines.  This living condition is juxtaposed with Freder’s world.  The stadium at Club of the Sons is basked in sunlight; Freder and his friends are lit with soft, even lighting.  The contrast between these two opposing worlds is achieved partially through the use of two different lighting techniques.  The scenes of the underground city are filmed with low-key lighting, a signature of the noir style. The technique used for the skyscraper world of the upper class is three-point lighting.  This method utilizes an even combination of the key, fill and back lights, where the back light helps to create depth and airiness by lighting the background, thus, separating the actor in the front from the set in the back.  These techniques are used throughout the film to emphasize the tension between the social classes.