METROLAND
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Lions Gate Films Director: Philip Saville Writer: Adrian Hodge, novel by Julian Barnes Cast: Christian Bale, Emily Watson, Lee Ross, Elsa Zylberstein, Rufus, Jonathan Aris, Ifan Meredith, Amanda Ryan, John Wood
A recent article in the New York Times Science section takes the view that mid-life crisis is in large part a red herring: that the vast majority of people go through their thirties and forties quite content with their lives. Well, heck, Julian Barnes, whose novel "Metroland" was published in 1980, let us in on that secret two decades ago! With due respect for the genuine problems that afflict our world, many "crises" are manufactured or inflated by the press, by Hollywood, and by the media in general to sell stories.
"Metroland," adapted from Barnes' novel for the screen by Adrian Hodges and directed by Philip Saville, is about Chris (Christian Bale), a man in his early thirties--not quite at midlife but acting as though he were--who seems to have it all. He's got a lovely and smart, though cynical wife, Marion (Emily Watson), a healthy daughter, and a tidy home in a clean London suburb known as Metroland (the last stop on the city's metro line). He enjoys a moderately successful career as a commercial photographer, but senses that something is missing. He's too secure. When his best friend Toni (Lee Ross) drops in for a visit in 1977, Chris's mind is transported back to an earlier, more carefree time during the late sixties when he and Toni part company to seek adventure in their separate ways. Chris, insisting like so many adolescents and twenty-somethings today that he will never be like his staid, bourgeois parents, takes his camera to Paris. He opts for a Bohemian life, scraping up a few francs each day from his pictures, and enjoys a torrid affair with a beautiful, liberated Parisian woman, Annick (Elsa Zylberstein). With her, the inexperienced Chris loses his virginity (in an amusing scene showing him as a clumsy oaf) and becomes increasingly committed to the release which the French way of life afford him. His spirit changes when he meets an English girl, Marion (Emily Watson), who brings out Chris's homesickness and whom he ultimately chooses because, really, you can't escape your innate character. The fun-loving Marion is more restrained, more earthbound than her French competition, and Chris recognizes her as his soul-mate.
Stories about once-radical friends who drop back into society inevitably bring to mind American classics like Lawrence Kasdan's 1983 "The Big Chill," a surface-level look at the characteristic cycle that brings head-in-the-clouds young people back to Earth. It's not just that we acquire kids, mortgages, and steady jobs we want to hold on to because of incremental gains in position, salary and pension. It's that after we've sown our wild oats for a decade or so and have seen the boozy party scene for what it is, we realize that we not only can't go back; we don't even want that life any more. With stability comes a kind of contentment that we'd not trade for the world, and few (if any) pictures bring that notion home more strikingly, honestly, and authentically as "Metroland." Though Toni and Chris have parted ways after a long and intense friendship, they remain fond of each other, though their life-styles remain far apart when they reunite. Toni remains the perpetual adolescent, still traveling--to Africa, to Italy, to California and New York-- still picking up girl friends and reawakening in Chris a questioning of his bourgeois ideals. Has Chris sold out for a boring job and life in a suburb where each day monotonously repeats its predecessor? Was Chris wrong to marry girl-next-door Marion, his sexual life restricted by each cry of his baby daughter in the next room--while Toni's days are pervaded with wine, women and song?
Director Saville resists the temptation to cast Toni as a homebreaker. He is a man who, despite his many acquaintances on three continents, longs to reestablish the good old days with his boyhood chum. Toni's return does, however, threaten to injure Chris's marriage as Chris increasingly looks back with nostalgic thoughts on his untroubled years in Paris.
Mark Knopfler's original soundtrack highlights the distinct personalities of the three principals: Toni, who refuses to grow up, or at least to surrender to what society tells him is mature; Marion, the sensible if domesticated woman who enjoys her suburban life, resisting the latest threat to its continuation; Annick, the seductive, devil-may-care French lover whose seductiveness oddly becomes insipid in Chris's mind; and Chris, torn between the glitter of his youth as a freelance photographer in an unrepressed Paris and his more serene thoughts about his life in Metroland.
For all the story's motif--that life is best when we adapt ourselves contentedly with its seven Shakespearean stages-- Saville aims for some balance in displaying one dispirited commuter (John Wood), taking his last ride to Metroland after forty-two years with a company that has scarcely recognized his contributions. Chris looks closely at him, imagining himself three decades hence--a miserable, broken man regretting that he did not follow Toni's call to arms.
Emily Watson, having turned in a first-rate performance as Jacqueline du Pre in one of the ten best picture of 1998 continues to strike us with her lack of affectation. While Christian Bale appears in virtually every scene, Watson, the author's ideological mouthpiece, anchors the show. Jean- Francois Robin's photography nicely contrasts the party- loving Paris of La Vie Boheme with the London suburb of generally contended suburbanites washing their cars, raising their families, making their peace with the passing years.
Not Rated. Running Time: 99 minutes. (C) 1999 Harvey Karten
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