On the heels of Reed’s Metropolitan and Barcelona review comes a companion review by guest writer John Adair.
Whit Stillman’s The Last Days of Disco came out over a decade ago, but its directionless youth who overestimate themselves seem even more prescient today than they did in 1998. That Stillman avoids making his characters hateful or unlikable while eliciting laughter and smiles is a testament to his skill as a writer and director, and to the film’s lasting place as a witty comedy rather than a wordy drama.
The Last Days of Disco takes place, as the opening title card suggests, in the “very early 1980s” amid the downfall of disco. However, his characters are not the typical disco mavens you’d expect, but a group of Ivy League-educated yuppies in New York City barely getting by on salaries that provide a standard of living far below what they grew up with. As a naive twenty year-old, I might have been fooled into thinking through much of the movie that these were truly smart people who knew who they were. But as a more seasoned viewer, it’s clear early on that these characters are as familiar with maturity as the average American is familiar with the history of Italian politics.
Most of the action surrounds Alice (Chloë Sevigny) and Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale), the latter constantly criticizing the former in the name of friendship and honesty. They spend a great deal of their weekends at an unnamed disco club in Manhattan with several other friends and acquaintances. All of them tend toward immaturity—the women largely expressed in matters of relationships, the men in their extensive knowledge of cartoons and comic books. That the biting critiques about one’s choice of a man and the theoretical readings of Lady and the Tramp are all delivered with such confidence and precision reveals their extensive education and knowledge.
But the strong meat in Stillman’s film comes from the way that even in these erudite conversations and comments, he shows the absurdity and emptiness of his characters’ knowledge. Not a one of them is happy. All of them are looking for something, but can’t seem to find it. Though their minds have been sharpened through much study and preparation, they haven’t yet begun to translate that knowledge to real life. They still get caught up in petty disagreements and analyzing the actions of others, passive observers in the theater of life going on all around them. They want life, but don’t have the first clue what to believe or how to act to attain it.
Alice, the least vocal of the group and the heroine of the film, provides something of a contrast. While she makes some foolish choices, the film quietly presents her more empathetically than the other characters. She’s authentic and genuine. She avoids spouting off about her knowledge or tearing people down. She works hard and hopes for a real relationship. She refuses to undermine others’ relationships, even if hers had first been undermined. The film climaxes when she realizes the depth of her mistakes, when she understands that the only way forward for her lies in the simple but profound gift of grace—grace given to her and grace she must offer to others, even when it’s not returned. In other words, Alice found maturity.
Disco may have died in the very early 1980s, but for Alice it certainly didn’t. Through grace she found a life where disco lived on—a life abundant with dancing and joy and love.