Metropolitan (1989)

PG-13 because a lot of stuff happens off camera or is heavily implied.  It's awful people doing awful things.  One part that is particularly offensive is the implication that one of the characters did a lewd sexual act to someone in the past.  But in terms of actual R-rated language, the movie keeps it pretty mild.  There's some drunkenness and vomiting at one point in the movie as well.  

DIRECTOR: Walt Stillman

See, now I have a predicament.  Usually, it takes me a minute to get into spooky season.  My friends tend to go spooky season early. I think I'm often too exhausted to be soaking in that much gore, so I tend to delay it.  But my list of horror movies this year?  Top tier.  There are some real bangers that I'm excited to watch for the first time.  But now I'm stuck writing about a movie that I am no longer mentally excited to write about, so please tolerate my malaise as I power my way through this slog of Metropolitan.

I think, if you really tried, you could organize Criterion releases into "Things that Criterion really likes."  This is the same category as Richard Linklater movies.  It's a celebration of late '80s and '90s indie cinema.  There's indie cinema that is actually pretty darned impressive.  But a lot of the American indie movies from this era tend to be talking heads almost espousing witty bon mots.  Now, during the '90s and early 2000s, I was really into this kind of stuff.  I was obsessed with Clerks because we were all obsessed with Clerks.  But something in me got incredibly exhausted with this kind of cinema.  This almost seems like the cinema of the college student.  It was so different from everything else we were watching.  It seemed so smart (man, I'm being really rough on an entire genre of film mainly because I wasn't in love with Metropolitan).  Maybe it was the constant "looking at the strings" and forgiving things that were meant to save on a budget.  After all, indie cinema is a celebration of pure cinema, removed from the control of the motion picture studios. But Metropolitan, especially dealing with the last twenty minutes, is incredibly frustrating.

Let's talk about the end of the movie first, because it made this movie from being a tolerable three-out-of-five star rating to a two.  (I'm assuming that I'm standing by that by the time I hit Letterboxd later today.) My initial take was that Metropolitan was the least romantic romantic comedy that I have ever seen.  Part of it, understandably, is a send up of the bourgeoisie.  (Note: despite teaching the word "bourgeoisie" means "middle class", every single real-world context for the word "bourgeoisie" illustrates upper class.  I need more information.) These kids, who have few problems, seem so self-involved that even the smallest slight seems to be a major deal.  I get that Stillman wants us to be critical of these kids because they, in many ways, are the absolute worst of the worst.  Even Tom, who is our protagonist, is kind of awful because of his hypocrisy.  Yet, I'm also criticizing myself with that commentary because I'm frustrated with the cast --particularly Charlie --for hating Tom and his few mistakes.  

Back to my topic sentence!  The end!  The entire thing, as critical as it is about the insular nature of the upper crust, is the white male wish-fulfillment fantasy.  Tom and Audrey's relationship initially is quite grounded.  Audrey likes Tom.  Tom is friends with Audrey, but is dating Serena.  Okay, that's reasonable.  He's allowed to not be in love with Audrey.  It's weird that he's keeping his relationship with Serena close to the vest, but that's also his own thing.  (Also, Serena sucks, but that's not really on Tom.)  But Charlie and Tom have a complicated relationship with Audrey.  Charlie has always been in love with Audrey, but she's not into him. (There's a wonderful irony that she can't understand why Tom doesn't love her but won't give Charlie the time of day.)  But the movie needed to make a bad guy.  Listen, Charlie and Tom both have lost their shot with Audrey.  She's frustrated with both of them.  The movie, honestly, should embrace the fact that she's lost to them and dismount on that.  Instead, we have to have a cardboard cutout of a villain: Von Sloneker.  

Von Sloneker is Clerks villain.  Golly, the ponytail and everything. The stiff delivery.   (I apologize greatly to Will Kempe, who played this part.  I often blame wooden performances in these kinds of films to directors.) He's everything a shortcut of a villain should be.  On top of that, any attempts to make him somewhat relatable are instantly undone.  He is an archetype unto himself.  The odds that Audrey, who completely out of character, runs into the arms of Von Sloneker --who has the most devious of intentions for this girl.  If we're talking about the White male fantasy, especially if we're throwing around terms like "beta male", this is it.  There's always this wish-fulfillment of the underdog beating up the bully to win this vulnerable woman.  Some grand romantic gesture will undo tons of self-involved, problematic behavior because that's kind of how we're wired.  For a movie that is divorcing itself from the studio system, it embraces a trope that, in no way, reflects reality.  Even if all of the elements of this narrative led to a confrontation between Tom, Charlie, and Von Sloneker, there's no way that the results would resemble anything that we actually see in the movie.  It just lacks verisimitude.

Perhaps my greatest takeaway from Metropolitan is Nick Smith.  (Is the naming of Nick and Tom homages to The Great Gatsby?  If so, why aren't these characters inverting their names?  Tom is the outsider looking in on the wealth of the aristocracy, carrying that imposter syndrome with him everywhere he goes.) Nick is meant to suck.  He's, again, the archetype of the upper class.  He's rude and boorish, not out of abuse but out of boredom.  We've seen this before. The odd thing is that --and a lot of this comes from the fact that Chris Eigemann is the most recognizable actor in this movie --Nick is oddly likable.  I kind of love the dynamic between Nick and Tom while I find Charlie insufferable. (We're meant to. Don't worry.) I love that, as awful as Nick's methods are, he's ultimately right about Von Sloneker.  Nick can easily be diagnosed as being perhaps the most childish and insecure amongst the UHB while demonstrating overcompensatory behavior to cover up his own insecurities.  Still, I like Nick and Tom.  That goodbye in disgrace is a great moment for the character and the rest of the film suffers for him leaving.

Unfortunately, a lot of my takeaway from this movie is that I've grown out of this era of filmmaking.  It's completely unfair and I'm commenting more on myself than I am on the film.  Sure, I loathe the end of this movie.  But I also didn't care for most of it, giving me more ick when it came to the end.