An Education Review
Posted by Erik Luers on 10.19.2009
Enroll early and stay for finals.......
Carey Mulligan ... Jenny
Peter Sarsgaard ... David
Alfred Molina ... Jack
Cara Seymour ... Majorie
Dominic Cooper ... Danny
Rosamund Pike ... Helen
Director Lone Scherfig's new movie, An Education, emphasizes and celebrates the arts and academia, so film scholars should take note. It's main messages promote staying in school, listening to your parents, and learning how to just sit back and be a kid. These are comforting words to live by, and indeed, An Education is a movie that makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside. But wait, don't run away just yet. It's a formulaic film which follows its formula to a tee, but armed with a cast and screenplay this smart and satisfying, I accepted the conventions and smiled along with them.
The film has a familiar three act structure, sure, but I can't really say the story is generic or tired. It plays like a British version of The Graduate, with a Benjamn Braddock who thinks he/she knows it all, and who comes to realize that you gain intelligence but do not inherit it. Stubborn and strong willed as most young adults usually are, they too can learn that there is perhaps nothing more childish and unattractive than acting like an adult. While we learn from our mistakes, we hopefully do not live by them.
Jenny, our very confident and intelligent young lead (played by Carey Mulligan), is good at school work and playing the cello. It's rather unfortunate then that she can't really understand the use of either (why do we always want more than the gifts we have?). Her stern but loving mother and father (Cara Seymour and Alfredo Molina, respectively) want her to work as hard as she can to get into Oxford, but Jenny doesn't possess any motivation for going to a school flooded with a bunch of brainwashed debutant bookworms. She is as smart as they come (or so she thinks), and she certainly has a lot more spunk than other kids her age. No, what Jenny needs is an upper class, sophisticated, art loving older rogue to come along, wine and dine her, and sweep her off her feet, and one day, just out of the blue, she gets one. His name is David, and he appears, at first glance, like a nice and caring father figure out to expose Jenny to concerts, films, theater, art dealings, and cigarettes. To note that he also wants to take her to France goes without saying.
David shows off his new girl to his friends (Dominic Cooper and Rosamund Pike), more suave and well off people with a love for everything shiny and expensive. Jenny becomes smitten with David and sees him as the window to the real life experiences she was never allowed to have. His knowledge and experience makes him attractive and Godly, and the fact that he is equally infatuated with Jenny (perhaps for being in awe of him) is only icing on the cake. He has what she needs and he loves that she needs it. He's a great talker and can pressure Jenny's parents into letting her go away with him for a weekend to meet C.S. Lewis, a good friend. Does David actually know C.S. Lewis, you ask? Well, no, but by the time you come to realize that fact he's already on the road and off with your daughter.
I'm describing a lot of the plot, and while I apologize for that, I must ask you, dear reader, if I may delve further. This film is all plot — unsurprising considering its source material, a memoir by Lynn Barber — and what works best about it is its richness. Some critics have noted that there are many twists and turns throughout the film's narrative, and that is true enough for me to reconfirm. Each scene gives us a little more information on David, a mysterious man too good to be true (because....he is). Jenny will learn more about him the hard way, multiple times over.
What I appreciated though was how Nick Hornby's screenplay never tries to overtly vilify the character of David. He's definitely not as sweet and kind as Jenny and we are at first lead to believe, but he is not an evil character designed for a story in search of a brooding antagonist. He's severely flawed, and what angers us the most about him is the simple fact that he cannot change. We want him to be as nice and sincere as he initially seems to be, and are deeply saddened and angered when he turns out to be less than perfect.
The film is very upbeat, and I'll leave it to you to decide whether or not that is a good thing. The songs used throughout are lively and infectious, and the movie has a dreamlike quality to it. When, in one scene, Jenny admires David sitting next to her in a night club, the female singer on stage emphasizes a comforting effect, as if life with David could be pure nirvana. No cares in a carefree world. Jenny is a complicated character, for she is very smart but not wise beyond her years. She looks at a female professor of hers (who is somewhat of a friend figure) as someone who lost out on all the fine things in life. She is entrapped and enslaved to education. This is a cold and judgmental way of thinking, but don't worry, Jenny comes around. I must also ask, if those that can't do teach, how could they then teach in the first place?
An Education takes place in the 1960s, and there is a reason for that, sociologically speaking at least. Jewish men and women are looked down upon by the head mistress (Emma Thompson) of Jenny's school. When Jenny tells her late in the film that Jesus was Jewish, the older woman responds, "I bet he told you that." What does the woman hate more, the fact that David is older, or the fact that he is a Jew? There are a couple of references about David's religious ties, and they aren't said in a positive light. Their inclusion adds another layer onto the film, perhaps one which asks us to sympathize with David for being of an oppressed group.
If that doesn't hammer the point home, in another scene, David helps to secure housing for the underclass African-American people of England. What a great contributor to society he must be, or so we are first lead to believe. The film, I felt, is about how society views you and how your actions change how you are publicly perceived. To be a free soul is to be damaging to your country.
Peter Sarsgaard's performance is very strong and nuanced, and his character must have presented the actor with a difficult task: claiming to be one person while turning out to be another. Both are troubled and wrong, but neither is a man who everyone should love to hate. I suspect that most people with despise David, and I will again be alone with my opinion. This is the life I lead. Alfred Molina is also tremendous as the funny yet overbearing father.When he tells Jenny about a story he heard on the radio about C.S. Lewis, your heart sinks. He knows he's been had, but he wants to be a loving parent to a daughter who needs him more than she may realize. In another British film, Enchanted April, Molina played a bumbling oaf who had fallen out of love. Here he is a bumbling oaf who can't seem to find a child to give it to.
I liked An Education a lot, I must say, and perhaps it'll be a big hit with audiences worldwide. It's a sweet movie that is in every sense of the word a coming of age tale, both in front of and behind the camera. Mulligan, Sarsgaard, and Molina all deliver excellent performances, and the screenplay gives them some great dialogue to play with (Jenny is a quick and dry humorist). The direction? The film moves and is briskly paced. Yes, David's final appearance in the movie (a big scene) ends abruptly, and some many wonder why he is kicked out of the picture so easily, but the film is about Jenny, not him. Scherfig allows us to see the young girl's point of view, even when deep down we know better. Maybe she does too. An Education ends not in tragedy but in happiness, and once in a while we must all hit a few rocky bumps to get where we want to be. Such is life.
The 411: An Education is an immensely satisfying film about growing up and the pain and heartbreak that can come with it. It's The Graduate meets Passing Strange. It has an excellent cast, nice music, brisk pacing, and a witty and thoughtful, touching screenplay. The direction is fine, nothing remarkable or anything, but it serves the material nicely. It's modest, but that's okay. Sometimes it's best to just sit back and let the story do it's thing. As an audience member, I did that too. Yes folks, this film made me smile. In a way, it's about sincere people encountering the immoral and insincere. But don't worry, by the end, they overcome, and we're glad that they do. Bring a friend to this one. Hell, bring the cello.
