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Metropolitan: Criterion Collection DVD Review

Metropolitan: Criterion Collection

July 19, 2012

Director: Whit Stillman,
Starring: Carolyn Farina, Edward Clements, Taylor Nichols, Christopher Eigeman, Allison Rutledge-Parisi, Dylan Hundley, Isabel Gillies, Bryan Leder, Will Kempe,

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DVD Review

J.D. Lafrance

The early 1990s marked the emergence of two independent filmmakers who were seen as possible heirs to Woody Allen’s cinematic legacy: Noah Baumbach (Kicking and Screaming) and Whit Stillman. The latter filmmaker, in particular, has often been cited in the same breath as Allen’s films. They both mine the same social strata —affluent, Upper East Side New Yorkers — for comedy. Stillman’s debut, Metropolitan (1990), is his most Allen-esque, right down to the simple opening credits sequence (using a font similar to the one Allen does in his films) accompanied by jazz music. Stillman’s characters, like Allen’s, also speak witty dialogue loaded with literary references. However, this is where the similarities begin and end. In Allen’s films, he presents upper class characters that are narcissistic and self-absorbed while Stillman tends to gently parody these qualities.

Completely by random, Tom Townsend (Clements), whose name sounds like something right out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, shares a cab with Nick Smith (Eigeman) and his friends coming out of a debutante party. Tom is inadvertently invited to a gathering at Sally Fowler’s (Hundley) where he becomes a part of her Rat Pack, a group of affluent twentysomethings. Tom catches the eye of Audrey (Farina) and they eventually bond over a discussion about Jane Austen. Audrey is a sweet, virtuous girl, just like the heroine she admires in Austen’s book, Mansfield Park. Audrey loves Austen’s prose while Tom prefers good, literary criticism because, as he puts it, “that way you can get both the novelist’s ideas as well as the critic’s thinking. With fiction I can never forget that none of it ever really happened. It was all just made up by the author.” The first party sequence does an excellent job of establishing this world and the characters that inhabit it.

Even though their group is known as the Sally Fowler Rat Pack, Nick is their unofficial leader, dominating many of the conversations with his caustic wit. Tom is seen as something of an intriguing outsider (at one point, Nick notices that he lives on the Upper West Side). He’s not as rich as the others but is able to hold his own intellectually. Charlie (Nichols) doesn’t like Tom because he has a thing for Audrey and knows that she fancies this social interloper. Throughout it all, Nick is Tom’s way into the group and lays out the social rules for him (he shows him the proper etiquette and gives him fashion tips). Tom is obviously the audience surrogate and along with him, we are immersed in this rarefied social milieu.

Metropolitan takes place during the Christmas holidays and depicts the inevitable decline of the Sally Fowler Rat Pack, much as Charlie theorizes early on in the film, confirming his fears of the decline of their generation. He even attempts to define it and frets that they are doomed to decline financially, lamenting the inevitable demise of the Preppie class. He also comes up with the term “Urban Haute Bourgeoisie” or UHB (pronounced “UB”) to describe his class but, in reality, it is just another word for Preppie. Initially, the characters in the film may seem pretentious but I believe that Stillman wants us to see past this facade to the anxiety-ridden personas that lie beneath as typified by Charlie.

Sally’s initial party is chock full of amusing statements, such as how Jane (Rutledge-Parisi) mentions to Tom that a classmate of hers was influenced by his theories on agrarian socialism and that “since then she’s joined the Red Underground Army. If she blows herself up, it’ll be your fault.” Tom admits that he’s a committed socialist who believes in the writings of 19th-century French social critic Charles Fourier. It also is during this sequence that Chris Eigeman gets some of the film’s best lines, such as when his character, Charlie and Tom talk about the effect that divorced parents and broken homes have on their group. Nick mentions that Jane’s father died suddenly the year before. Tom laments that it must’ve been awful for her to which Nick deadpans, “Yes. It was tough on him too.” Eigeman is the master of sarcasm as his character offers caustic observations and quips about those he doesn’t like, chief among them Rick Von Sloneker (Kempe), an arrogant aristocrat. Eigeman was born to spout Stillman’s dialogue as is evident in the way Nick offers a hilarious argument as to why Tom should continue to attend deb parties. Stillman obviously thought so too and has cast the actor in every one of his films.

There is a certain timeless quality to the film with no real indication of the time period it is set in and this makes Metropolitan the most enduring of Stillman’s three films, which include Barcelona (1994) and The Last Days of Disco (1998) — forming a loose-knit trilogy of doomed Preppies in love. With Metropolitan, Stillman has created an esoteric film that isn’t afraid to name drop Fourier, discuss the advantages of detachable collars and lament the decline of the Preppie class due to downward social mobility. Twenty years since its debut, Stillman has created a fully realized world with well-written characters that he has real affection for and this is something that doesn’t always come through in a lot Woody Allen’s work (at least not recently).

Special Features:

Metropolitan has recently been given the Blu-Ray upgrade by the folks at the Criterion Collection and the film has never looked better. They have managed to retain the film-like look while offering better clarity that makes its textures really stand out. All of the extras on the previous DVD edition have been carried over.

There is an audio commentary by Stillman, editor Christopher Tellefsen and actors Christopher Eigeman and Taylor Nichols. Stillman talks about working on a small budget and points out examples in the film where they cut costs. For example, they would tip sympathetic doormen at 4 am so that they could film shots of actors walking in and out of buildings. Eigeman and Nichols recall their impressions of working on what was their feature film debut. Stillman candidly confesses his technical shortcomings at the time – he had only gotten to chapter nine in the book, How to Direct a Movie. This is a relaxed, low-key track full of intelligent observations as you would expect from people responsible for a smart film.

“Outtakes” features a montage of raw footage that was not used and includes blown line readings, several kinds of reaction shots for a given scene and a tribute to the film’s line producer who died in 1992.

There are two clips of “Alternate Casting” with optional commentary by Stillman. In one segment we see Will Kempe as Nick Smith who Stillman says was up for the role with Eigeman but he felt that ultimately, Kempe did not have the right kind of chemistry with Edward Clements that Eigeman did.

Finally, there is a theatrical trailer.

J.D. is a freelance writer who is currently doing research for a book on the films of Michael Mann. He likes reading anything written by Jack Kerouac, James Ellroy, J.D. Salinger, Harlan Ellison or Thomas Pynchon. J.D. is currently addicted to the T.V. series 24 and enjoys drinking a lot of Sprite. This is not a blatant plug for the beverage but if they ever decided to give him a lifetime supply he certainly wouldn’t turn them down.
view all DVD reviews by JD Lafrance

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Rating: 94%

Website: http://www.criterion.com/films/774-metropolitan

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