Making the 12-hour road trip from Pennsylvania to Chicago, my friends and I listened to a year-end top ten list from NPR’s David Edelstein as we rolled past the industrial lights of Gary, Indiana. Edelstein noted “hip cynicism, even nihilism,” in 2008’s movies, citing The Dark Knight as a prime example.
I’ll tell you candidly – I love dark, cynical, yes, even nihilistic films.The macabre side of human experience is fascinating, and there has been a strong run of artistic, bleak films lately.I propose, however, that it’s equally important to examine another side of life: experiences of virtue. Whit Stillman’s three films Metropolitan (1990), Barcelona (1994), and Last Days of Disco (1998) show virtue as fun, not fusty.
Whit Stillman’s comedies, unofficially considered a trilogy, focus on upper-class folk. The trilogy begins with Metropolitan.Committed socialist Tom Townsend happens into Manhattan’s debutante season.He is welcomed into the inner circle, and finds a far nicer group of people than he imagined. In the inner circle, we meet characters so layered and intriguing that we understand and like them better the more we watch these films.
The “urban haute bourgeoisie” or “Uhbs,” as Charlie Black names his social class in Metropolitan, are shown in various life stages throughout the trilogy, and in each, Stillman explores and celebrates virtue.
Celebrating Virtue
In Metropolitan, Audrey Rouget “has a rare largeness of mind,” according to one admirer. She’s “good-looking, smart, charming, principled – it’s an unusual combination.” Indeed, it’s a combination you’d be most likely to find in a page from Jane Austen, but Audrey manages virtue without priggishness. She admits she hasn’t had much life experience, but she has focused a keen eye on all she has done. She wears her virtue with humility, forgiving Tom Townsend when he leaves her without an escort at a party, and befriending Cynthia, whom several characters have dismissed as a slut.
In the end, the virtuous heroine has two men who are not just interested in her, but who take a cab from Manhattan to Southampton, pull out a Derringer pistol and “rescue” her from the home of the film’s villain, Rick Von Sloneker. In a frenzy, Tom had convinced Charlie Black to make the trip, certain Von Sloneker would seduce her, but Tom failed to account for Audrey’s resolute character.
Last Days of Disco doesn’t focus on the same group of Uhbs, but a different group of friends and acquaintances at the next life stage. (Throughout the trilogy, characters from past movies make cameos, which is delightful in a Where’s Waldo way). They’ve moved out on their own in Manhattan, acquired their first jobs, and virtue is harder to come by.
Alice Kinnon has “something of the kindergarten teacher” about her, and her “virtue” at the start is more a blend of sweet awkwardness, snobbishness and inexperience. Seeking to shed her goody-goody image, Alice leaves the disco one night with Tom Platt, whom she knew from her college days, and in a comedic scene, slinks around his apartment dancing and uttering the nonsensical seduction, “There’s something really sexy about Scrooge McDuck.” (Her friend Charlotte coached her about dropping the word “sexy” into her conversations. Her more successful version was, “There’s something really sexy about strobe lights.”)
Alice loses her virginity when she sleeps with Tom, and contracts herpes and gonorrhea. Later, she finds that virtue was what Tom was craving, though his hypocrisy is infuriating:
When I saw you that night, you were a vision. Not just of loveliness, but of . . . of . . . virtue, and sanity . . . What I was craving was the sort of sentient individual who would not abandon her intelligence to hop into bed with every guy she meets in a night club.
The virtue Stillman celebrates in this film is humility. Alongside a plot where the mighty are falling – an exclusive night club is meeting its doom – the girl who had it all together becomes an object of pity. A pharmacist hands Alice the antibiotics for the STDs and says, “Sorry,” while we hear Amazing Grace in the background. After her one-night stand with Tom, it seems Alice hit bottom and is making herself at home there. She mopes around her apartment and dates Des McGrath, the witty, cocaine-sniffing and womanizing nightclub manager.
But Alice’s humiliation soon leads to humility.She dates Josh, a kind and honorable guy the group has ridiculed because of his bipolar episodes.We hear them sharing intimate thoughts and see them walking slower when they are together, clearly savoring the company.Alice’s character attracts notice in her workplace, too.The publishing house notices her intelligence and cleverness and she is promoted to associate editor.
Others, who have been proud or hypocritical, do not fare so well. Tom faces the fact that he, a successful environmental lawyer, has “spread epidemiological pollution.”1 Charlotte, by far the haughtiest member of the group, loses both boyfriend and job.
In Barcelona, virtue doesn’t come easily, either. Ted Boynton, the protagonist, is caught in a bitter struggle to hold onto a legalistic substitute for religion and virtue. Ted’s cousin Fred, who knows Ted better than Ted knows himself – and is thus his critic – calls it like he sees it. “Cut out this Pollyanna-Little-Miss-Mary-Sunshine . . . crap. My God, you’re almost pathological. I’d like to wring your neck.” Ted has a list of rules that could span the English channel, and the moment when he is most free in expressing his religion comes when he dances around the room to Glenn Miller’s “Pennsylvania 6-5000” while holding a Bible. (This dancing disaster is reminiscent of Elaine’s “Little Kicks” in Seinfeld, but even funnier.)
Other than that, Ted’s “virtue” only leads to tension.He’s goodhearted and sincere, but he can’t keep the rules he sets for himself. Barcelona is a more tense film than Metropolitan or Last Days of Disco.Ted and Fred, whose quarrels date back to childhood, bicker throughout the first three-quarters of the film. When Ted and Fred aren’t bickering with each other, they are defending America from being seen as “facha” (fascist).
Much of the tension, both dramatic and comic, comes from Ted’s attempts at virtue, like when he decides he has a “real romantic-illusion problem” and will only date “terrific plain or homely women.” The tension comes when Aurora, a woman plain enough to attract his notice, doesn’t show up for their first date. When the beautiful Montserrat appears instead, he accidentally implies that he doesn’t think Aurora is pretty.
“But she’s beautiful – ” insists Montserrat.
“Um, physically?” Ted asks, showing that in his “virtuous” rejecting of romantic illusions, he’s really giving her far less credit than most people do.
Virtue doesn’t come easily, but it comes, as in Last Days of Disco, through humility. When Fred is shot and sent into a coma because he’s rumored to have CIA connections, Ted says in a voice over: “Even the disasters that strike those we are closest to only reach us filtered through our own colossal egotism.”
It’s here that Ted changes. He comes to realize much about himself. “I was beginning to suspect that my religious faith was largely bogus.” Ted devotes himself to caring for Fred, partly out of guilt, as he admits, but in caring for Fred, he is doing the real work of selfless living instead of struggling to keep a list of rules.
Virtue is the Mother of Invention?
Whit Stillman is like Tom Townsend, not just because his biography is somewhat parallel, but because he fits Audrey’s description of Tom: “He doesn’t say all the expected things.”
Stillman’s dialogue is ornate, substantive, and clever. Indeed, itmakes me think of the best conversations I’ve had in my life. They range from deep musings:
When you think to yourself . . . you must have that feeling that your thoughts aren’t entirely wasted . . I think this sense of being silently listened to with total comprehension . . . represents our innate belief in a supreme being.
To comic one-liners: “The Cha-Cha is no more ridiculous than life itself.”
To re-interpretations of pop culture, demonstrating, for instance, that children’s movies like Lady and the Tramp condition women to fall for jerks.
His references are fresh, too. Seriously, when was the last time you heard a movie reference something like Brook Farm? When the references are obscure, they are also instructive, placed in the dialogue for more than name-dropping.
Because Stillman praises convention and doesn’t shun virtue, there are more options open to him. It turns out looking at convention and virtue only through a perspective that disparages them can seriously limit your stock of references. Stillman’s characters can move from examining Jane Austen or War and Peace to analyzing The Graduate from the perspective of the make-out king. Stillman doesn’t feel the need for hip references; he simply explores his interests, and they are fascinating.
If praising virtue leads to creativity, this is good news for contemporary artists because it opens up more options for them. Stillman is proof that virtue doesn’t have to lead to canned narratives. Virtue in a world where it is largely misunderstood is fuel for drama, irony and a whole lot of cinematic fun.
_____
(1) Lauren Weiner, “Whit Stillman’s restorative irony,” in Doomed Bourgeois in Love: Essays on the Films of Whit Stillman ed. Mark C. Henrie (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2001), 33.
All other quotes are from Stillman’s films.
