The good folks at Criterion have been on a tear recently, with some good movies being released. First up was Whit Stillman’s “The Last Days of Disco,” the third, and final, installment, in his "urban haute bourgeoisie" trilogy. But not having seen the first two films that he wrote and directed, I had to wait for those to come from Netflix. While I believe I would have appreciated “TLDoD” even had I not seen his previous films, I just prefer to see, especially in a trilogy (even if it is a loose one), a director’s previous films so I can see a little bit of his evolution and ease myself into his oeuvre.
His first movie, “Metropolitan,” honestly took me by surprise. I had read a little about it beforehand, but mostly just the blurb on Wikipedia or on the Netflix disc sleeve.
A tale of idle rich trust-fund babies, one may wonder why this movie would be any interesting to watch. The dialogue is all the reason you need.
From the first moments of this film I “got it.” The dialogue was sharp and witty as one character convinces another to share a cab that he doesn’t want to go to a place he wasn’t going to go to, just so that there will be no “ill feelings” and consequently they will all be travelling in the same way, making the ride more economical.
It is in this way that Tom Townsend gets an introduction into the “Sally Fowler Rat Pack.” This group of Northeastern prep school—cum—Ivy League graduates comes together during the cotillion season. Tom is a socialist (not just any type however, he’s a Fourierist) who is open about his disapproval of upper crust snobs. Despite feeling like an outsider (he does not, after all, own his own tuxedo and must rent one), he finds that he naturally fits with their group. This is a world that Nick Carraway would be at home in. Even as one of the girls in this group develops a crush on Tom, he is still having trouble getting over the preppie girl who broke his heart years before.
This movie had some of the funniest lines and situations I’ve seen in a while, delivered with such aplomb and exactness. Unfortunately, while some will retain their cleverness out of context, I fear that most of them would not. One of my favorite exchanges, however, is when two characters are discussing whether or not the fact that a social experiment turned town no longer exists means that it failed. As one character points out, we all cease to exist, yet we are not all failures.
The direction in this movie is pitch perfect. In this case, writing the movie you’re that will become your first directorial effort obviously helped Stillman. He had a vision in his head, and not only was he able to write it well enough to earn an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, but he was able to execute it and turn his vision into reality. The lines and scenes, as outlandish as they can seem on the surface, are delivered with the right amount of deadpan-ish emotion.
But most intriguing is the world these characters inhabit. As this movie was made in 1990, it doesn’t have cell phones, the Internet, or so many of the things that make today’s world so markedly different from the world of 20 years ago. Included in selling this world is the conviction with which these characters commit to what they are saying. This world also includes the belief that they are, to put it bluntly, doomed as a class. They have been born, bred, and raised in upper class society. And so there is a feeling that they won’t be able to compete in the real world, that their trust funds and sense of security has left them with an underdeveloped sense of motivation and the hunger needed to excel in a competitive world. It is actually this self-awareness that gives them depth. They know they truly aren’t that important, even though they act like aristocracy. It’s just the world they inhabit, but they know it’s on the way out. Without it they would just be a bunch of self-righteous young turks with nothing put forward; but with that self-awareness, the knowledge that their world will not last, we begin to understand, if not sympathize with, them. And that makes all the difference.
It is difficult for me to really say what rating I would give this film. I am going to settle on 8.5/10. It is stronger than most of the 8's I have, but a 9? I'm not so sure about that. All in all, I immensely enjoyed this film for the dialogue, the acting, and the absurd but down to earth situations.
If you like quirky, understated movies, then I would definitely give this (and the other films by Stillman, but I'll get to those later) a shot.
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