Requiem for That Dream

Every few years or so, my wayward interests become diverted back to the Whit Stillman film Metropolitan (1990).  The first time I saw it, admittedly quite some time ago (twenty years now?),  I caught it on public television on a particularly dull Saturday evening while home from college.   I remembered how I had no idea what it was about, but kept watching as the conversations (of which there are many) drew me in and I was quite sad for it to end.  Even more strange is that I remember wondering why most of my friends and acquaintances did not speak or act the same way despite their being in pretty much the same milieu (or not).

A decade or so passed, and I had not thought of the film at all.  Or much anything else, to be quite frank.  While waiting for the subway to arrive (I was with someone from Brooklyn who was much younger than me and full of genuine curiosity), she asked me whether I had ever seen the film.  I replied in the affirmative and she was quite astonished.  I guess I can understand why.  Maybe a viewing of the film makes one feel a bit privileged, by which I mean lucky, to have seen it.  When days and nights come and go so swiftly, and in so dull a manner, anything a little different could be quite brilliant.

I thought of her again, years later after that person and I were no longer on speaking terms- maybe five years or more later- and I watched it, and again I was mesmerized, in particular by the Nick Smith character.

And, again, years later (it was once more five years)- I watched it.  While doing so, I kept seeing the past (my real and imagined ones) come and go, and begin to understand why Whit Stillman put in one character of a different generation who appears near the end of the film- the one who says "We simply fail without being doomed"

Maybe five years later, this film would seem even more elegiac. As a postscript, the place where the tuxedos are rent and/or bought, A.T. Harris, also no longer exists.

A screenshot from the film as Nick Smith waves goodbye.

And as Nick walks away, but not before a final adieu.