7. Whit Stillman
Key Film: Metropolitan, Barcelona, Last Days of Disco, Damsels in Distress The boom of the 1990s independent film movement allowed a myriad of writer-directors to come into the scene to offer a unique voice in cinema. Richard Linklater and Kevin Smtih gave voice to the slacker youth in films such as Slacker and Clerks. And for the high brow, faux-pretentious college crowd, Noah Baumbach and Whit Stillman had Kicking and Screaming and Metropolitan. Stillman had a unique voice from the very first words uttered in his debut effort, Metropolitan. A Harvard graduate, Stillman was able to relay his own disillusionment as a person in a sea of people who think they are smarter than everyone else. This satire on youth culture, and culture that is not normally seen, is spritely and glib as it is a film constructed on conversations that would actually occur in that type of atmosphere. The comedy comes from the ridiculousness of the people in this world and the tragedy comes from the blind, Reagan-like ignorance of the future. And this all came from his first feature. Stillman established himself as a writer-screenwriter of merit, touching close to a Woody Allen type satire on the social mores of the upper middle class in various situations. His screenplay is wrought with sharp insights into his own world and it does not matter that he essentially writes about the same people or situation all the time. But, his brilliance is his screenplay, to the extent that he can simply be enjoyed with just closing your eyes and hearing the rapid fire dialogue. Just recently, he released his first film in more than ten years, Damsels in Distress. The movie felt like a hit of fresh air, satirizing youths passive aggressive attempts of making the world a better place. His sense of irony in his new film with the efforts of Greta Gerwig was reminiscent of an Ernst Lubitsch film and it was just as delightful as one as well. Stillman is an independent director with a unique voice but because of his relative stagnant career, of his own choice, he never gain the following of his peers but hopefully there would be a renew efforts to seek out his films, which some are on Criterion.