Film Club Review – Metropolitan

Metropolitan is a story about the high class New York socialite society in the late 20th century. When the movie starts out, a group of young socialite are meeting and having having a lot of conversations which require a lot of big, educated words and ideas. Whether this is an attempt at irony regarding pretentiousness or whether its actual pretentiousness as a warning for certain audiences to cease watching, I’m still not sure. But rest assured, thought he pretentiousness never really disappears, it becomes a lot more palatable as the film goes on.

In fact, I really enjoyed this film. The main character Tom is accidentally invited to one of these socialite parties and as he is getting an inside look into this society, so are we the audience. I love getting sneak peaks into various subcultures through film, and as such I loved getting a sneak peak here. It also seemed to be quite honest about the high class (as far as I know) rather than overly critical of it.

The characters start off seeming like bland snobs, but very quickly evolve into unique characters, each one having their own role in the group. And as we get engrossed in the characters, we become engrossed in the story. And in the end, because we are invested, we feel a slight heartbreak with what happens to the group.

Some ideas which were brought up were never really resolved, like Tom’s questionable hypocrisy, but for the most part each character had their own resolution. Near the closing of the film, the whole future of debutante society is brought into question in a very thought-provoking way, both through the dialogue and through the mechanics of the story. Watching this commentary play out was really interesting.
8/10