An Education (Movie Review)

Movie Review
An Education
2009
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Alfred Molina
Directed by Lone Scherfig

There have been plenty of instances over the years where movies have such horrendous beginnings that even though the rest of the movie is decent, the film never recovers. An Education is an example of a film that not only survives a horribly produced beginning but recovers so strongly that in the end the screwed up beginning is almost forgotten. While director Lone Scherfig got some things right and a couple of things incredibly wrong, the saving grace of the movie was the amazing performance by Carey Mulligan. Flanked by an fantastic supporting cast, it was the actors and the sharp dialogue of the script that makes this one of the best English-language films to come out of Europe in a while.

Jenny Miller (Carey Mulligan) is a teenager in 1960s Britain. She goes to a private school and is being groomed to go to Oxford. While she comes from a loving home, she feels boxed in due to her father’s insistence that schoolwork comes before anything else and hobbies steal from available time where extra studying could take place. On a rainy day, she’s offered a ride by a stranger named David Goldman (Peter Sarsgaard). They quickly become close friends despite the fact that David is at least double her age. He takes her on trips that broaden her cultural horizons. Although her parents were apprehensive about David initially, his charm almost immediately warms them over. However, her English teacher and her school’s headmistress are less than impressed with their relationship and warn Jenny that she’s heading down a slippery slope. It’s apparent that David is hiding something and may not be as upstanding a citizen as he claims but Jenny is quick to ignore these signs because she’s having the time of her life. Things change drastically for her when David proposes marriage shortly after her seventeenth birthday.

I need to get the worst part of this movie off my chest immediately. The first couple of minutes of the film are so horribly filmed that I almost debated paying to see the film a second time just so I could make sure I saw things properly. The initial meeting between Jenny and David in the rain looks like it was put together by someone who had no idea what they were doing. The scene starts off with Jenny standing in the pouring rain. She gets into David’s car. With the audiences’ view looking out the car window on Jenny’s side; it appears to have stopped raining which is fine. However, seconds later, it’s pouring worse than before. They only travel by car for a couple of blocks and when Jenny gets out, only her hair is wet; her clothes appear to be dry. The streets don’t look that wet at all; there are wet spots but there are plenty of dry spots. It looks so fake and unbelievable that it ruins the first part of the movie. With some movies you can have a suspension of belief to a certain degree but how hard would have been to splash a couple of buckets of water on Mulligan before they shot footage of her getting out of the car? Were they not allowed to get the interior of the car wet? It was a very bewildering scene to say the least.

It took a while but the movie was able to shine through past that debacle. This was mostly because of Mulligan’s outstanding performance. She was simply brilliant in the role of Jenny. Every emotion seemed to be crafted delicately and displayed with a sense of conviction that few actors are able to show on screen in such a manner. That’s not to say she didn’t have help along the way as the supporting cast was phenomenal as well. Sarsgaard is incredible as David; whom he plays so well that it’s easy to understand how Jenny and her parents fell under his spell. Molina as Jenny’s father did a great job considering that a lesser performance would have had the audience hating him for being uncaring about the feelings of his daughter and only caring about seeing her doing something worthwhile but not necessarily what she wants. Instead, he plays the role that becomes endearing to the audience by showing that the father is only looking out for Jenny’s best interest and while he may clamp down on her extra-curricular activities, it’s only done so to protect her from screwing up her life rather than preventing her from having fun. However, Mulligan’s performance is one for the ages, and thankfully the other members of the cast manage to stay with her pace. The film is able to shine from the amazing work the actors put in.

Another thing that helps bolster the film is the incredible script. The dialogue is very sharply written and would make people interested in the production even if it was broadcast on radio. It feels as if the dialogue was coming naturally from the actors rather than something written just for the actors to regurgitate. Even lines written for some of the seldom used characters seems well thought out. The funny lines are hilarious. The serious lines bring a strong intensity to a film with no major action scenes. It’s as if instead of using the period of each sentence in the script, exclamation marks were used instead. The script feels so well crafted that it feels as if they only decided to shoot the film only when they felt that they got everything perfect; which, for the most part, they did.

Despite botching the first scene with Jenny and David, Scherfig does redeem herself by letting the actors and the dialogue take center stage. There are a couple of scenes that show off some artistic flair like when Jenny and David go to Paris that are very well done using different type of camera shots and French music playing in the background. There were a few things that could have been done better as I could have sworn that there were a couple of instances where exterior doors were opened but never shut (but I could have missed the sound of them closing). However, she was smart enough to know what amazing talent and dialogue she had to work with and not try to go crazy by bombarding the film with fancy filming techniques that has become the trademark of slick Hollywood productions. It seems like her strategy was to stand back and not get in the way of the outstanding performances; which paid off well. She did an admirable job capturing this story for us to witness.

Lone Scherfig almost screwed up An Education almost before people get a chance to settle in but the film not only recovered, it ended up being a near-cinematic masterpiece. It should have been better made and the mistakes in the film were avoidable to a point where it almost felt lazy that these issues were not corrected. The film was saved by its actors and the script. If it wasn’t for the fact that the first scene with Jenny and David is critical to establishing the foundation of their relationship, I would recommend either showing up to the screening late or fast-forward while playing it at home. If you’re a continuity freak, you will have a meltdown as it looks really bad. Despite that problem, which rest assured, you’ll be able to live through, the film is excellent and should be watched at your earliest convenience.

☆☆☆☆