An Education

by Joel Bocko

Of what value is an education? Humanity has sought experience and knowledge since the dawn of consciousness, and for just as long has been casting doubt upon its own learning. In particular, the highly structured, conventionalized "educations" of modern civilization have inspired criticism and confusion; counter-arguments have often used mere tradition as a recourse, to little satisfaction. In An Education, Jenny (Carey Mulligan) listens to the tired defenses of her elite school's headmistress (Emma Thomson) - "There's also the civil service" she declares as a last resort. Unimpressed, Jenny informs the older woman that she'll have to do much better if someone asks for the point of all this experience in the future; an education which merely perpetuates itself (all those encouraging Jenny to complete her schooling have themselves become teachers) seems senseless to the young schoolgirl.

Ironically, then, the education which An Education ultimately calls into question is that of the real world rather than the academic sphere. Jenny has fallen in love with a charming rich rogue, David (Peter Sarsgaard) who seems to have everything she wants in spades. He can take her to classical concerts, tony art auctions, and nightclubs; her parents, the supposedly prim and proper guardians of her adolescent liberty, are instantly melted by his charms. Even the knowledge that David is involved in shady business deals and outright thieving is not enough to disillusion Jenny; she realizes this is the price she must pay for the rewards of her romance. Yet there's far more to be paid, as she eventually finds out - before the big bombshell drops, she's already faced with a discussion: pursue her relationship with David to its logical conclusion, or continue to devote all her energies to studying and getting into Oxford, her goal since - it seems - infancy.

As it turns out, not at all to our surprise, David is not what Jenny thinks he is. As the final twist reveals, in a device admittedly as old as the movies, the erstwhile lover is in fact already married and Jenny - who has dropped out of school to become engaged - is neither the first nor presumably the last of his conquests. Capsized on the cusp of adulthood, Jenny must struggle to fix her sails and continue towards the university horizon, crippled by this romantic tempest but determined to stay the course and conceal her scars. The movie concludes when she is accepted to Oxford - we witness our heroine biking with other boys ("they were all boys" she notes of her collegian lovers, with a note of condescending resignation) and informing us that while she appeared as fresh-faced and naive as her peers, she was not. When invited to Paris, where she had already travelled - and fornicated - with David, Jenny tells her foolish boyfriend that she'd love to go: "I've never been."

Here then, we have two educations, one discredited, one celebrated - with roles reversed at the conclusion. Jenny's immersion in real-life experience ("I never lived before I met you," she tells David) is rich and rewarding in the moment, but contains no lasting value. No, not even the value of growing up, except in the sense that she now knows what not to do: as the film informs us, the young woman must deny her past in order to fulfill her future. Meanwhile, the formal education - the much-satirized rigidity of the teaching corps and the primrose path to Oxford - is finally upheld after being slagged for two hours. Nothing grows on trees, as Jenny's father and boyfriend both tell her, and the striving acquisition of knowledge and conventional experience (in the sense that it unfolds on the expected timetable, in the expected ways) are ultimately the only potential seeds of success.

Strangely, the movie - which seems to take this conclusion at face value - has never really answered Jenny's nagging criticisms of the headmistress. It's still unclear what her future holds, except for honesty if you believe that to be its own virtue; we've seen why her alternative to a conventional education was hopeless, but not why that conventional education is much better. An Education seems to blink in the face of nihilism, and retreat. At any rate, the movie's "message", however incomplete is less a hindrance than some of the flaws in its execution: the script is often too on-the-nose (Jenny's father gives her a pep talk through the bathroom door which doesn't tell us anythng new; Emma Thompson's satire of a proper snobbish anti-Semite is amusing but superficial) and at other times too unconvincing (David's ability to hoodwink Jenny's parents never quite rings true, though it has an interesting foundation in class envy).

The most fatally unconvincing element of the film is Sarsgaard's performance as David. The actor is unfortunately miscast at the charismatic heel - and here's a case where miscasting is due not to inability (Sarsgaard is a fine actor I've enjoyed in many roles) so much as the wrong presence. David should be less overtly sinister, more superficially appealing, a monster whose completely easy manner conceals a sociopathic ferocity. But Sarsgaard makes us uneasy from the moment he starts flirting with a 16-year-old girl; he's more often creepy than charming. A David who could both seduce this foolish romantic girl and her bourgeois parents should be effortlessly aristocratic, with his Jewish background less an outsider red-flag than a simmering discontent motivating his subversions. He should win us over emotionally, allowing us to welcome his presence and believe in his promises on a surface level, even as intellectually we know something's amiss. Sarsgaard broadcasts his malevolence through melancholy hardset features and a trademark physical unease - then when it comes time to display his cowardly, malicious qualities in their full measure he's not quite able to sell this either. Again, due more to a disconnect between the actor's tangible presence and the character's supposed personality than to any insufficiency in Sarsgaard's ability.

Carey Mulligan  more than makes up for Sarsgaard's miscasting. Indeed, the film rests on her shoulders, or rather her touchingly awkward but enticing gazes and glances (no matter what she's actually looking at, Jenny always seems to be her own object of contemplation, like a classical figurine). Director Lone Sherfig has given the movie a gloss which captures early-sixties chic and eternal romantic idealism, but these would be empty signifiers without Mulligan's heartbreaking moodiness to enliven them. Almost always onscreen, she collapses the movie in her absence; floating past its own flaws and cliches on the wings of her sad little eyes and crooked smile, the film achieves a kind of cool, sincere grace. Mullignan's soulful countenance convinces us that she's sucking the juice out of every moment (even those she believes"boring" - probably her synonym for resltessness rather than lifelessness). This romantic willingness effectively, and subtly, belies the movie's commitment to a "sensible" education, and almost convinces us that, foolishness aside, Jenny's romance was the more valuable experience. But then movies always have a way of making ephemera more attractive than acquisition; whether this holds true for reality, I leave it for you to decide. Educate yourself at will.

8 comments:

  1. One can argue the dynamics of the story and the choices heroin makes. The cast is engaging, and the characterizations plausible. But as a film An Education fails dramatically. It says nothing original and as cinema it is pedestrian. The period detail and the charms of Paris are mere floss.

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  2. Fair points, Tony (thanks for stopping by).

    If I am more forgiving of the film overall (though I lodge some of the same complaints as you) it's because I felt Mulligan carried the film pretty far on her back, even if not all the way to the finishing line. Pauline Kael said a great film sustains and embellishes all the things we like about trash: a gesture, a moment, a face, a mood. While I certainly would not go so far as to call An Education "trash" it is an example of a flawed movie with strong aspects that can make the experience enjoyable nonetheless (or at least they did for me).

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  3. Aaaah, where to begin. I'm ridiculously fond of this film - it's my favourite of the last year actually. I'm really getting beaten down with my thoughts on Sarsgaard. It seems I'm one of the few who didn't find him creepy. Just to give my take on the films "message"...I know it does seem as if the film backtracks on what Jenny was fighting for but I think the point of it all is that both worlds come with a price: Mrs. Stubbs has to endure those pony essays etc so that she can find the rare student like Jenny and live in her bookish, but satisfying world of the literary OR she could be like Helen and Danny and sacrifice her "beliefs" to continue in it. It's a choice I suppose and she has a bit of both worlds because even though she looks as "wide eyed" as the other students she's not. She knows more than they do, so perhaps she can enjoy/appreciate her fate more.

    And I really liked that conversation between Molina and Mulligan through the door. Nontheless, I like these insightful reviews.

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  4. Andrew, thanks for stopping by. There's definitely plenty here to like, starting (at least for me) with Mulligan's presence, whatever the film's flaws. Interesting with Sarsgaard - I didn't know so many others felt as I do! Maybe there's some unfair expectations as he's usually cast as the oddball - plus we always see him as an American so the British accent is a bit startling. I thought he seemed to be doing his best to handle the part well, but was miscast.

    My reading of where Jenny stands at the film's end is close to yours but oddly enough, I didn't get the sense that the film itself thought this way (that she's better-off having had the experience). Then again, it's called "An Education" so perhaps we're meant to see the value in Jenny's mistakes, even if she doesn't - though shouldn't she, all these years later?

    Didn't buy the conversation through the door, but I enjoyed Molina overall.

    I was going to ask if you had a review up of the film, but then I searched your site and saw you had about a dozen which referred to it! Sorry, I haven't been there in a while so I missed all the "Forgotten Character" and "Great Scene" posts. I love list-making so I've bookmarked them all, and will check them out soon. Great stuff...

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  5. I also wonder if anyone's read the memoir and how it informed their view of the movie. Does the real woman seem more ambiguous about her "education" than Jenny seems to in the movie?

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  6. I really like your review, even though you didn't go all crazy for it like me. This is part of the fun of movie watching.

    I didn't read the actual memoir, but the woman did write an article on it and she pointed to the fact that her time with David (three years in reality I believe) made her more knowledgeable about that society so that when she got older she could appreciate art, understand the etiquette of the society etc. Something to that effect. It's been so long, I'm sure I'm forgetting something.

    "Sorry, I haven't been there in a while" No apology necessary, I've not been here either which I can't explain. I have a whole lot of reading to catch up on. :)

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  7. Yeah, it's hard to keep tabs on everybody - but I try to play catch-up, which is why I encourage these sort of down-the-line comments on my old blogs. I don't really like the structure of blogs whereby old posts fade away and try to do my part to discourage that sensibility, although perhaps in some cases old posts should just be allowed to fade away (ha, ha).

    Interesting about the article. I've been wondering about source material with a lot of the films I've been seeing lately - while I'm all for letting the film live its own life, I'm increasingly fascinated by what adaptations take and leave, and why they do so.

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  8. (Updated 6/2: Here are comments which were left on the Sun's Not Yellow link-post, which has now been deleted:)

    Stephen said...

    MovieMan,

    Sorry to intrude on this review but some of the comments on my site have disappeared and at the bottom of some reviews it gives you the wrong number (i.e. for Avatar it says there are 0 comments but there are five when you click on it - there were 6!)

    Do you know why this could have happened? It's no big deal but it is confusing.

    Thanks.
    March 2, 2010 2:06 AM
    MovieMan0283 said...

    Sorry, I started to respond as if you were saying that was a problem with my blog - but now I see you're referring to yours. Thanks for letting me know. I wonder if it has to do with whatever account you are using (though that wouldn't explain the Avatar thing). I usually just post there with a screenname/URL. I do know Blogger's been acting wierdly latelyk, but I didn't think that was one of the ways in which it was doing so.
    March 2, 2010 12:04 PM

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