Friday, February 13, 2009

# 3: The Best Conservative Movies of the Last 25 Years    [Mark Henrie]

Metropolitan (1990): Whit Stillman’s Oscar-nominated debut takes a red-headed outsider into the luxurious drawing rooms and debutante balls of New York’s Upper East Side elite. One character, a committed socialist, falls for the discreet charm of the urban haute bourgeoisie. Another plaintively theorizes the inevitable doom of his class. A reader of Jane Austen wonders what’s wrong with a novel’s having a virtuous heroine. And a roguish defender of standards and detachable collars delivers more sophisticated conservative one-liners than a year’s worth of Yale Party of the Right debates. With mocking affection, gentle irony, and a blizzard of witty dialogue, Stillman manages the impossible: He brings us to see what is admirable and necessary in the customs and conventions of America’s upper class. 

— Mark Henrie is the editor of Doomed Bourgeois in Love: Essays on the Films of Whit Stillman. 

02/13 11:00 AMShare