Ocean's Twelve

After the commercial failures of Full Frontal and Solaris in 2002, there was pressure on Steven Soderbergh, when he announced that his next film was to be the sequel to the wildly successful Ocean’s Eleven (2001), to not only come up with a box office hit but to also outperform the previous film. With big budget, star-studded casts like the one in Ocean’s Twelve (2004), there is always the danger of having them look too smug and self-indulgent instead of having fun along with the audience. Ocean’s Eleven managed to straddle this line quite well, resulting in an entertaining popcorn movie. Soderbergh kept his cast in check, never letting them go too far over-the-top and shooting it with a style that was always interesting to watch. The big question for the sequel was if he could pull off the same feat without repeating himself too much. Ocean’s Twelve ended making less than its predecessor (but still a lot of money) and cost more while also dividing critics but in some ways I find it a better film.

Danny Ocean (George Clooney) is supposed to be retired and enjoying domestic bliss with Tess (Julia Roberts). However, old habits die-hard and the lure of pulling heists is always calling. She catches him casing a jewelry story on their anniversary. To make matters worse, Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) is still hot on their trail, tracking down all of the original eleven and letting them know, in his own casually menacing way, that he wants the $160 million, plus interest, that they stole from him in Ocean’s Eleven, and in two weeks time. The montage of him doing this mirrors the one in the first film where Danny and Rusty recruited their crew. If Benedict was an imposing figure in the first film, Andy Garcia makes him even more of a threatening presence in this montage by doing little except exude menace with his eyes and the all-business tone of his voice.

So, Danny gets everybody back together to figure out what to do. Obviously, they need to pull another job but they are too high profile in the United States, so they go to Europe and cross paths with a truly formidable opponent and rival master thief known as the Night Fox (Vincent Cassel), a bored French playboy. He’s jealous of Danny’s status as the world’s greatest thief and is out to prove that he’s the best by having the both of them go after the same thing: the Faberge Imperial Coronation egg. Vincent Cassel plays the Night Fox as an ultra-confident, cocky man in such a way that you want to see Danny and company knock him down a peg.

Ocean’s Twelve ups the difficulty level for our heroes even more by having most of the crew neutralized leaving only Basher (Don Cheadle), Linus (Matt Damon) and Virgil (Scott Caan) left to pull off an impossible heist. So, they bring in Tess to pose as, well, Julia Roberts. Unfortunately, another major movie star is staying at the same hotel, which only adds to the meta aspect. Said movie star gamely plays a fictional version of himself. The scene where he meets Tess as Julia Roberts is very amusing as Damon and Roberts act all star-struck in front of him. It is also interesting in that the meta aspect that was present in Ocean’s Eleven is made even more explicit – something that turned off some critics and audiences but I think works extremely well because Soderbergh isn’t having a cutesy cameo of a movie star for the sake of it but actually incorporating them into the plot and making them an integral part of the scam.

If the first film was about Danny’s redemption by reconciling with Tess, then Ocean’s Twelve is about Rusty’s (Brad Pitt) redemption by reconciling with his past love, Isabel Lahiri (Catherine Zeta-Jones), a determined and quite beautiful Interpol agent. Like Danny’s feelings for Tess potentially compromising his involvement in the heist in Ocean’s Eleven, Rusty’s feelings for Isabel leaves him potentially vulnerable in Ocean’s Twelve. To her credit, Catherine Zeta-Jones fits right in with the European vibe, maintaining just the right mix of determination in nailing Danny and his crew and vulnerability when she’s with Rusty. Their relationship elevates the film ever so slightly above the standard heist story and the conclusion of her subplot is surprisingly emotional and poignant – the highpoint of the trilogy and something you don’t expect from a film like Ocean’s Twelve, which is essentially a feature-length lark.

Matt Damon demonstrates excellent comic timing in this film and is the real stand-out of this strong cast. Early on, Linus asks Rusty if he could have more to do this time out and this moment comes across as quite self-reflexive. It’s as if Damon were almost asking if he could have more screen time in the film itself. In some respects, he is the group’s stammering conscience. There is an amusing scene where Linus, Danny and Rusty meet a contact by the name of Matsui (Robbie Coltrane) for a potential job. Danny, Rusty and Matsui all speak cryptically which leaves poor Linus totally confused. Damon plays the scene so well as he looks desperately to his cohorts for help or some sort of clue as to what he should say. Put on the spot, Linus finally responds by quoting lyrics from “Kashmir” by Led Zeppelin to hilarious effect.

While doing a press conference in Rome during the promotional tour for Ocean’s Eleven, Steven Soderbergh fell in love with the city and over dinner with producer Jerry Weintraub began thinking about the story and structure for a sequel. He got the idea to set it in Europe and was so inspired that he started writing down ideas. After returning to Los Angeles, Weintraub discovered George Nolfi’s screenplay, entitled Honor Among Thieves, about the greatest thief in America going up against his equal in Europe. It was originally developed for John Woo to direct but Weintraub sent the script to George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Soderbergh. The director came up with the basic idea for the film and thought that it “would be more fun if Twelve was the movie in which everything goes wrong from the get-go.” He ended up merging Nolfi’s script with his own ideas. Soderbergh saw this film as more emotional, character-driven and complicated on a narrative level than the first one.

Prior to the start of principal photography, which lasted 77 days, Julia Roberts found out that she was pregnant and Soderbergh incorporated it into the script. He also met with Vincent Cassel at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival and asked the actor if he would be interested in being in Ocean’s Twelve. He agreed without reading the script because he trusted someone with a reputation like Soderbergh’s. Once filming began, the production spent ten weeks globetrotting all over the world with stops in Chicago, Amsterdam, Paris, Monte Carlo, Lake Cuomo, and Rome. Principal photography concluded with four weeks on three Warner Brothers soundstages in L.A.

Not surprisingly, Ocean’s Twelve received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, “The movie is all about behavior, dialogue, star power and wiseass in-jokes. I really sort of liked it.” In her review for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis wrote, “Ocean's Twelve may be slim pickings, but when a film contains a bit as sublime as Rusty putting the moves on a visibly startled Isabel while he's literally hotfooting it from the law it's the kind of movie moment that can tide you over for a week.” The Washington Post’s Desson Thomson wrote, “In this sprawling oglefest, such things as "narrative" and "story" are remote little abstractions indeed. Director Steven Soderbergh uses the same reality-show looseness he brought to his K Street television series.” USA Today gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, “Exuding heaps of postmodern cool — these guys never even break a sweat —Ocean's Twelve also gets comic mileage out of petty bickering among Danny's teammates.”

In his review for the Village Voice, Dennis Lim wrote, “Watching other people's vacation home movies is rarely this fun. Quick, cheap thrills spiked with a jazzy, retro new wave vibe, Ocean's Twelve suggests a double issue of Us Weekly guest-edited by the old Cahiers du Cinema crew.” However, Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “D+” rating and Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote, “What's on screen is lazy, second-rate, phoned-in — a heist in which it's the audience whose pockets have been picked.” The New York Observer’s Andrew Sarris felt that the film “Hits a new low in condescending facetiousness, with no fewer than 15 performers of varying talents, tongues firmly in cheeks, undercutting all the genre's action conventions while camping up a storm on two continents.” Finally, Slate’s David Edelstein wrote, “Ocean's Twelve disintegrates along with its linearity. Two days after seeing it, I can't even remember how it ended. But I do remember Julia Roberts' endearing whoops of panic.”

According to Soderbergh, Ocean’s Twelve tested as well with audiences as the previous film had. He, however, had to deal with expectations from the success of Ocean’s Eleven: “That is what this film confronted and got beaten by, because it’s a completely different movie from the first one. It’s weirder…in terms of the imagery and the music, it is unquestionably the most arresting of the three.” 

Once again Soderbergh keeps the pace brisk and breezy, making the two-hour running time fly by. Like its predecessor, Ocean’s Twelve is beautifully shot with atmospheric lighting and saturated color as evident in the bright yellow that permeates Isabel’s Europol lecture or the green lighting that illuminates the underwater sequence during a heist that Danny and his crew pull off, or the red lighting that dominates the nightclub where Rusty and Isabel meet. Most of the film takes place in Europe and Soderbergh adopts the look of a European film from the 1960’s, which also applies to the eclectically groovy soundtrack from David Holmes that evokes a ‘60s Euro-lounge vibe. The director even described the film’s aesthetic as “the most expensive episode of a ‘60s television show ever.” He and Holmes agreed that the score would be completely different from Ocean’s Eleven in order to complement the different look and feel. Soderbergh is an excellent visual storyteller and this is evident in several scenes that he depicts without any dialogue, instead resorting to music married to visuals that conveys exactly what’s going on. He understands the kind of movie he’s making and doesn’t try to be too cute or wink knowingly at the audience, instead focusing at the task at hand: making a confident, entertaining movie. Granted, Ocean’s Twelve is no Traffic (2000), and it’s not meant to be, but you could do a lot worse with two hours of your time.

Next Week: Ocean's Thirteen

SOURCES

Canfield, Kevin. “David Levien and Brian Koppelman: Ocean’s Two.” MovieMaker. July 31, 2007.

Rosen, Christopher. “Steven Soderbergh Doesn’t Care If You Like Ocean’s 12, But Don’t Hate It For the Wrong Reason.” The Huffington Post. December 10, 2014.

DVD of the Week: The Walking Dead: The Complete First Season

In the past few years, vampire-themed programs have surfaced on television with True Blood, The Vampire Diaries and, recently, Being Human (both U.K. and the U.S. remake). Sure, there have been more across the board, supernatural fare with shows like Haven and, well, Supernatural, but up until now no one has attempted a zombie-themed program. Due to the graphic nature of most post-George Romero zombie films, it would be impossible to do a decent show (if you were going to have gore) outside of HBO or Showtime. However, thanks to channels like AMC and FX producing more challenging fare like Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Shield, there is more leeway on what you can show.


The time was right for The Walking Dead, an adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s graphic novel series of the same name, about a small group of people trying to survive a zombie apocalypse. Director Frank Darabont and producer Gale Anne Hurd, no strangers to the horror genre, are the driving forces behind this show and wisely enlisted legendary makeup artist Greg Nicotero to create the gruesome carnage. His presence also gives the show additional credibility among horror fans. This isn’t going to be cheap, slapped-together gore effects, but realistically rendered stuff that nightmares are made of. The end result is an engaging tale of survival that isn’t just a bunch of gory set pieces but also about humanity on the brink of extinction.


After being seriously wounded by a gunshot, police officer Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) wakes up from a coma in a hospital to find it in complete disarray and populated with the living dead. Driven to find out if his wife Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) and his little boy are still alive, Rick arms himself and heads for the nearest large city – Atlanta – and quickly discovers that the world has been devastated by a zombie apocalypse. While the hospital scene recalls a similar one in 28 Days Later (2002), The Walking Dead quickly settles into a familiar Romero-esque tale of survival as Rick is reunited with his family and a small group of people that include his partner and best friend Shane Walsh (Jon Bernthal). The Darabont-directed pilot episode sets the tone for the rest of the series as our group of survivors encounters plenty of zombies and also living people who are just as dangerous as the undead.


The Walking Dead has the look and feel of a feature film as it starts off on an intimate level but by the end of the first season its scope has expanded considerably so that we get an idea of just how bad the epidemic has gotten. There are some powerful images throughout the six-episode season, like the parking lot full of dead bodies all tied up and bagged in the pilot, or Rick and another survivor covering themselves in blood and gore so that they can make their way through city streets populated by zombies in the appropriately titled, “Guts.” All of this horrific eye candy is juxtaposed with the interpersonal relationships between the group of survivors, in particular, the love triangle between Rick, Lori and Shane. Andrew Lincoln (previously known mostly for his role in Love, Actually) anchors the show with his portrayal of Rick Grimes. He’s a strong, stand-up guy that cares but over the course of the season, Lincoln shows the cracks that occasionally form on Rick's façade as he fears for the safety of his family and doubts his own leadership skills. It is also great to see Darabont regulars Jeffrey DeMunn and Laurie Holden as regular cast members who get some fantastic moments here and there that help define their characters.

It is the humanity the cast injects into their respective characters that makes The Walking Dead more than a simple gore fest and is perhaps the most Romero-esque aspect. However, where his stories were served in feature-length chunks, Darabont and his writers have the time to develop multi-episode story arcs and introduce characters that don’t make a significant impact until later on, possibly even in season two. This is one of the most interesting things about the show as we see what happens to these characters over time and how more of the nightmarish world they inhabit is revealed.


Special Features:


“The Making of The Walking Dead” is a 30-minute featurette on how the show came together. Darabont was drawn to the characters in Kirkman’s comic book and also the notion of a serialized zombie story. This extra takes us through the show’s genesis with the cast and crew talking about it with plenty of behind-the-scenes clips. Highlights include seeing Greg Nicotero applying zombie makeup.


“Inside The Walking Dead: Episodes 1-6” consist of five minute featurettes about each episode from the first season with cast and crew talking about their intentions for them.


“A Sneak Peek with Robert Kirkman” features the writer introducing more behind-the-scenes with clips from the show and the cast talking about it. There is some overlap from the Making Of featurette.


“Behind the Scenes Zombie Make-Up Tests” sees Greg Nicotero giving some insight into how they transform a person into a zombie. This is a fascinating extra as we see the process broken down for you to try if so inclined.


“Convention Panel with Producers” features highlights from the San Diego Comic Con with Kirkman, Darabont, Nicotero and others. They talk about how the show differs from its source material. The cast also join the panel and talk about their characters.


Also included is a trailer.


“Zombie School” shows how the extras are taught to act like zombies.

“Bicycle Girl” takes us through the genesis of a memorable zombie in the pilot episode.


“On Set with Robert Kirkman” features another location shoot from the pilot episode.


“Hanging with Steven Yeun” features the actor giving us a tour of another location and speaking fondly of his love for the comic book, which he was into even before the show was made.


“Inside Dave’s RV” features Jeffrey DeMunn taking us on a whimsical tour of his character’s Winnebago.


Finally, there is “On Set with Andrew Lincoln,” yet another tour of a location shoot as the actor takes a breather from filming.

Ocean's Eleven (2001)

“Ocean’s Eleven was my opportunity to make a movie that has no desire except to give you pleasure, where you surrender without embarrassment or regret.” – Steven Soderbergh

Fresh from the one-two success of Erin Brockovich (2000) and Traffic (2000), Steven Soderbergh made a conscious decision to shift gears and make a purely entertaining film for a major studio. He managed to convince movie stars George Clooney (whom he had already worked with on Out of Sight) and Brad Pitt to take major cuts in their multi-million dollar salaries and headline a remake of the Rat Pack heist film Ocean’s Eleven (1960). With Clooney and Pitt on board, Soderbergh was then able to get an impressive cast including the likes of Matt Damon and Julia Roberts (both of whom also agreed to take pay cuts) and avoid having his film come across as nothing more than a vanity project for a bunch of smug movie stars. On the contrary, Ocean’s Eleven (2001) is a slick heist film in the tradition of The Sting (1973) in the sense that you know the outcome (the good guys win) but the fun is in how they get there as Soderbergh utilizes every stylish technique that he has available at his disposal.

Daniel Ocean (George Clooney) has just been released from prison and is eager to return to his high-end criminal enterprises. He sets his sights on Las Vegas with plans to rob three prestigious casinos: the MGM Grand, the Mirage, and the Bellagio, all of which keep their considerable sums of money in an ultra-secure hi-tech vault controlled by Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) who, incidentally, is currently dating Danny’s ex-wife Tess (Julia Roberts). It’s not going to be easy and so, with the help of his good friend and ace fixer Rusty Ryan (Brad Pitt), they recruit nine experts to help them pull off a near-impossible heist. In addition to the heist, which serves as the main plot, Ted Griffin’s screenplay expertly weaves in a subplot involving Danny attempt to reconnect with Tess.

This film oozes cool right from the opening credits that play over a fantastic shot of the Atlantic City skyline at night accompanied by funky trip-hop type music by Northern Irish disc jockey David Holmes. We meet Rusty wasting his time teaching young movie stars (Holly Marie Combs and Topher Grace among others making fun of themselves) to play cards. We meet him in Hollywood with a cool groove playing over his establishing shot. This sequence is a bit of meta fun as we see Pitt, one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, teaching other movie stars playing a parody of themselves being totally clueless at playing poker only to eventually be hustled by a bemused Danny. Soderbergh even slides in a few sly inside jokes, like Danny asking Topher Grace if it’s hard to make the transition from television to film, which, of course, is exactly what Clooney did. Or, how Grace gets mobbed by autograph hounds while Clooney and Pitt are completely ignored.

One of the best sequences in the film is when Danny and Rusty recruit their crew. The scene where they convince Reuben Tishkoff (Elliott Gould) to bankroll their operation is a wonderful example of how expositional dialogue being delivered in the right way by the right actor can be entertaining and informative as Elliott Gould does a fantastic job of warning Danny and Rusty of just how dangerous Benedict is. From there, each character that Danny and Rusty approach is given their own introduction that briefly and succinctly highlights their unique skill and distinctive personality traits. Linus Caldwell (Matt Damon) is an up-and-coming pickpocket with uncanny dexterity. There’s the Malloy brothers, Virgil (Casey Affleck) and Turk (Scott Caan), two drivers by trade with one of them having an affinity for remote controlled devices and a perchance for bickering and irritating each other, which provides a good source of humor. Livingston Dell (Eddie Jemison) is an electronics expert in the area of surveillance. Basher Tarr (Don Cheadle) is a demolitions expert with Don Cheadle sporting an obviously exaggerated Cockney accent. Yen (Shaobo Qin) is a diminutive top-of-the-line acrobat that can get in and out of any tight space. Finally, there is Saul Bloom (Carl Reiner), a retired flimflam man coaxed back into action by Rusty. Each actor is given at least one scene, often more, to come front and center and do their thing and this is done in a way that doesn’t distract you from the story at hand, which is quite an accomplishment with such a large cast.

David Holmes expertly mixes jazz, funk, soul and hip hop in a way that evokes groovy trip hop or acid jazz but in a retro way that evokes Quincy Jones circa the 1970’s. The often-fat bass lines give certain musical cues a confident swagger. There is also plenty of Hammond organ and vibraphone looped to give a lounge-y kind of vibe at times. Later on in the film, Holmes brings in strings and brass to accentuate the romantic subplot between Danny and Tess. Holmes also incorporates songs, like Elvis Presley’s “A Little Less Conversation” to fantastic effect. This came out of watching the original Ocean’s Eleven as Holmes explained in an interview, "Then I tried to think of ways to identify with what was going on - with it being a contemporary film, how to be original, but set within the heart of Las Vegas. Which is where the Elvis song 'A Little Less Conversation' came about, because obviously Elvis had a really strong affiliation with Las Vegas, and that track has a very contemporary feel."

Steven Soderbergh read Ted Griffin’s screenplay in an afternoon in January 2000. The next day he called producer Jerry Weintraub and told him he wanted to direct the film. What he liked about the script was that it didn’t evoke the original 1960 version but “had this one foot back in the heyday of the studio star-driven movie, like Howard Hawks or George Cukor.” Soderbergh had always been drawn to heist films because, “the conflicts are so clear and dramatic. This seemed to be everything that you want a big Hollywood film to be, on the script level.” He had just made two dramas – Erin Brockovich and Traffic – and wanted to make a fun movie. To prepare for shooting Ocean’s Eleven, he watched Ghostbusters (1984) because he was impressed at “that sort of physical scale [that] feels so tossed-off, with such understated performances and obvious generosity among all the performers.” He also studied films by David Fincher, Steven Spielberg and John McTiernan because they knew how to “orchestrate physical action the way I like to see it.” He looked at how these filmmakers used lens length and height, camera movement and editing, as well as, “how they used their extras, how they structured movements within shots that carried you to the next movement and the next.”

Soderbergh got George Clooney involved and half-jokingly told him, “let’s make it an Irwin Allen movie, where they used to have 10 stars.” Originally, the director considered casting Luke and Owen Wilson, Bruce Willis, and Ralph Fiennes as the villain. Once Clooney was on board, they got the rest of the cast to commit at radically reduced rates, starting with Brad Pitt. However, during filming, the cast stayed in their own 7,000-square-foot villas at the Bellagio. Before shooting, Soderbergh told his cast, “Show up ready to work. If you think you’re just going to walk through this, you’re mistaken. If anybody gets smug, we’re dead.” Soderbergh wanted to shoot in the Bellagio, the MGM Grand and the Mirage – an impossible feat for more mere mortals; however, Weintraub had the connections and the clout to make it happen. The production was allowed to shoot on the floor of the casinos during the day, which nobody is given access to and the casino bosses even shut down entire pits for Soderbergh to shoot in. This allowed the director to design shots that were complicated and large in scale.

Soderbergh wanted the lighting for Ocean’s Eleven to be based in reality and to look like it wasn’t lit at all – not a problem in Las Vegas, a place overloaded with every kind of light imaginable. At times, Soderbergh would add some color to enhance the mood for dramatic purposes in order to put the audience inside the world of the film. He also realized that the locations played a large part in the plot and was interested in showing as much of the environment as possible. One challenge Soderbergh faced was the logistics of filming big dialogue scenes with Danny and his crew in a visually interested way. He had a lot of people in confined spaces and didn’t want these scenes to be boring. So, he attempted to frame shots that clearly established where everyone was while also giving them enough depth and geometry to make the characters interesting to look at.

Ocean’s Eleven received mostly positive reviews from critics clearly charmed by what the film had to offer. Roger Ebert gave it three out of four stars and wrote, “The movie excels in its delivery of dialogue. The screenplay by Ted Griffin is elegantly epigrammatic, with dialogue that sounds like a cross between Noel Coward and a 1940s noir thriller.” The New York Times’ Elvis Mitchell wrote, “Mr. Soderbergh does some of his best work in Ocean's Eleven, working with a ticking suavity he tried to bring to lesser movies like The Underneath. He has a breathtaking amount of technique at his fingertips, aided immensely by the popping freshness of the score by David Holmes, who he worked with successfully on Out of Sight. Mr. Holmes scales his rhythms to the picture's pace, giving the movie a heartbeat.” New York magazine’s Peter Rainer wrote, “Some of its members, such as Clooney and Roberts, epitomize the kind of old Hollywood glamour that would have fit right into the Bogart-Bacall forties. Their attractiveness carries a flagrant sense of sexual entitlement; they know they're sizzling, and they find this knowledge not only exhilarating but funny (and they're sexier for finding it so).” Entertainment Weekly gave the film an “A” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “It wouldn't be wrong to call Ocean's Eleven a trifle, but it's a debonair trifle made with high-wire effrontery, the kind that can't be faked. This giddy and glancing charade is one of the most sheerly pleasurable movies to come out this year, and it cements Soderbergh's status as the reigning artist-entertainer at work in Hollywood today.” Even the Village Voice’s J. Hoberman had nice things to say: “The movie is slick and studiously cool—with plenty of visual flourishes but not too much soul.” However, USA Today only gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and Mike Clark wrote, “Despite dashes of droll dialogue from screenwriter Ted Griffin, the remake aims for cool but instead gets chilly. It's not a stretch to call it surprisingly glum.”

In a nice touch, Ocean’s Eleven never waxes nostalgic about the original film but instead is wistful about Las Vegas as it was in the 1960’s when the casinos were still run by the Mob and had yet to be corporatized and Disney-fied. This is reinforced in one of the motivations Danny has of robbing Benedict. It’s not just that he’s dating his ex-wife but Benedict also recently demolished one of the last old school casinos left in Vegas. Unlike Benedict, Danny respects the past and recruits Reuben and Saul, veteran con artists whose heyday was the ‘60s. It’s great to see Soderbergh giving actors like Gould and Reiner screen-time in a major studio film. These guys don’t work nearly enough and their performances in Ocean’s Eleven are a potent reminder of how good they can be if given the right material and the opportunity. Entrusted with only his second major studio film with an A-list budget, Soderbergh effortlessly orchestrates a fun, engaging popcorn movie like an old pro that has been doing this for their entire career.

Next week: Ocean's Twelve

Metropolitan

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 (Edward Clements), whose name sounds like something right out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, shares a cab with Nick Smith (Chris Eigeman) and his friends coming out of a debutante party. Tom is inadvertently invited to a gathering at Sally Fowler’s (Dylan Hundley) where he becomes a part of her Rat Pack, a group of affluent twentysomethings. Tom catches the eye of Audrey (Carolyn 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 (Taylor 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 (Allison 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 (Will 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.


After graduating from Harvard University in 1973, Whit Stillman went into book and magazine publishing. In the early 1980s, he moved into film, representing Spanish films for foreign sales. During this time, he began writing the screenplay for what would become Metropolitan in 1984. At first, all he had was a setting and an image of young people in black and white evening clothes “set against the cream and gilt of New York interiors.” Stillman drew on his memories from his days at Harvard where he read the works of 19th-century reformer Charles Fourier. He ended up writing the monologue about the upper classes being doomed to failure at a restaurant during the 1985 Cannes Film Festival while promoting Spanish films. At the time, he was feeling marginalized and channeled it into this speech. In 1988, Stillman snuck into a debutante party just to make sure they hadn’t changed much and so they’d be accurately depicted in his film.


Like Tom, Stillman felt like an outsider amid the Park Avenue debutant set and he also lived with his mother after his parents divorced. Initially, Tom was the focus of the script but then Stillman got sick of him as “the typical male ingénue,” and audience surrogate. He put the script away for awhile and decided to shift the focus to Audrey and this balanced the story, opening it up so that Charlie and Nick’s roles grew.


Stillman deliberately set his film during an ambiguous time period. He said, “I wanted it to be somewhat in the past, but also timeless so it would not be pegged to one year.” He decided to shoot it in New York City because he could “have an expensive-looking film without actually paying any money for it.” Having very few film contacts, he approached his friends to help finance the film. Stillman used his uptown connections during filming, which began in December 1988 with a cast that had no prior film experience. For example, scenes set in a posh living room were shot inside the Lehrman Institute. Metropolitan was made for less than $100,000 and finished for an additional $300,000.

Metropolitan received fairly positive reviews when it was first released. Roger Ebert gave it three-and-a-half stars out of four and said of Stillman, “He has made a film Scott Fitzgerald might have been comfortable with, a film about people covering their own insecurities with a facade of social ease. And he has written wonderful dialogue, words in which the characters discuss ideas and feelings instead of simply marching through plot points as most Hollywood characters do.” In his review for The New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote, “Particularly funny are Mr. Nichols, as the pessimistic Charlie, who talks of doom and downward mobility, and Mr. Eigeman's Nick, who has a snap judgment for every occasion.” The Washington Post’s Rita Kempley wrote, “Whit Stillman, who wrote and directed this anthropological comedy of manners, approaches his material with both an insider's affection and contempt for his own kind.” The Chicago Reader’s Jonathan Rosenbaum found that the film “has its awkward moments, but the charm of the actors and the wit and freshness of the dialogue (which touches on such subjects as Jane Austen, romance, and class consciousness) keep one interested.” Finally, Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “C+” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “Instead of a full-bodied comic portrait of the coming-out-party set, Metropolitan offers a thin, cartoon version. Then it uses that cartoonishness to make everyone on-screen seem irresistibly cute.”


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).

SOURCES

Holden, Stephen. “Rich and Poor in One World of Film.” The New York Times. March 16, 1990.

Kaufman, Anthony. “Down and Out on Park Ave.” Filmmaker.

Stanley, Alessandra. “Metropolitan Chronicles Preppy Angst.” The New York Times. July 29, 1990.

Sussler, Betsy. “Whit Stillman.” Bomb. Winter 1991.