Ah youth. It's hard to know where it ends and real adulthood begins. That said, it seems universally true that we all think we've made it to a responsible decisionmaking age long before we truly grasp the gravity of our adulthood, or of our decisions. This is the dilemma that Jenny embodies in An Education (which is based on the memoirs of journalist Lynn Barber). Jenny's father isn't helping — he's so dead-set on getting her into Oxford that he cares of little else. For example, he feels that Jenny needn't *practice* her cello or attend the symphony; just being a member of the youth orchestra is enough to beef up her application.
No surprise, then that Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is swept off her feet by the older David (Peter Saaragaard), with his culture, his fun-loving grown-upness, his glamourous friends, and his inescapable charm. He's able to charm even her parents, as he and Jenny devise harmless lies to goad them into allowing her to accompany him on increasingly extravagant trips. Jenny is too young, too trusting, or too naive to realize how much one lie begets another, and that someone with one secret probably has others.
An Education is beautifully filmed, wonderfully acted, and often hilarious or poignant. It has glorious speeches on the role of formal education in our lives and about the severe career and cultural limits women still faced in the '60s (limits that women in some cultures still face).
"Best Picture," however, it is not.
For a film that makes such a valiant effort to prove the lameness of The Establishment, of square British upper-middle-class expectations, its ultimate message serves to totally undermine that initial premise. It's as if screenwriter Nick Hornby was unaware of the film's ending when he wrote the film's tenacious beginning and middle acts. If this seems like nitpicking, perhaps my opinion of the picture was skewed from the start because of how creepy I find it's central romance. Nowadays, there are laws against someone in his late 20s — maybe 30s!— courting a 16-year-old girl. Of course, the movie is based on a true story. But that might actually make the whole thing worse.
Considering the grave implications of this romance and what happens between this starring couple, the last act of An Education felt a bit easy and trite. Cloying music detracts from a heartfelt speech from Jenny's dad, and the closing scene features an out-of-nowhere voice-over that feels like a cop-out.
Ultimately, I'd be less critical of An Education's last 20 minutes if I hadn't been so impressed with the rest of the film. Maybe the sea of critics with nary a negative word to say about the film had the opposite reaction, i.e., the minor ending issues were forgivable because of the movies' superior majority. With whom will you side? It's definitely worth seeng An Education to fnd out for yourself.
I really wish I would of thought of that! I Wow- I absolutely love what you did with this
tart. I bet it was heaven! It is gorgeous and I can only imagine how delicious it was!
Posted by: Puma Drift Cat | September 09, 2011 at 02:40 AM