12-03-09 Movie Review: An Education

The only noncommercial movie I know of over the coming week is the everfaithful Blank Page gallery's Sunday 7:30 one, and I know little enough about it: it's called Werkmeister Harmonies, it's directed by a man I guess I should know about named Bela Tarr, it's 145 minutes long, and it involves a village's encounter with a traveling circus that includes what is apparently a frozen whale. And it was made in 2000. That's 7:30 Sunday in the Blank Page gallery at 917 West Douglas.

And commercially, we have a first-rate grownup movie about December and May in the unexcitingly titled An Education.

Well, September and May is more like it: Peter Sarsgaard is about thirty, and newcomer Carey Mulligan is a little over half that, and the precise relationship between them is something you're never quite sure of. Sarsgaard is certainly patient, if he is after sex; he never pushes for it, hardly even suggests it until Mulligar does, and even then lets her set all the rules. And he does give her an education, taking her to the theatre and discussing literature and general culture with her, guiding her through the art galleries, and treating her to cafe society in their native London as well as, eventually, Paris. All this fits Mulligan's sex as you might expect, maybe not even with love.

Just the same, it seemed to me that Mulligan's parents, Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour, should have been a little more worried about it all. Seymour practically disappears into the woodwork, as a certain concept of perfect wifedom probably required. But Alfred Molina had very strong reservations until Sarsgaard's honorable behavior disarmed him, and then, it was suggested to me by a woman in the audience, the possibility of freeing himself from the expenses of a daughter in college wins him over entirely; he never cared for the idea of education for women in the first place, and he probably likes the taste of upper-class living as much as Mulligan does. This is my take on these characters; An Education presents realistically complicated people and lets you judge them for yourself.

Sarsgaard's compadres are Dominic Cooper as a slightly sleazy individual who may not entirely like what's going on, and Rosamund Pike, and utterly likable sex bomb who doesn't seem to have enough brain to be held responsible for anything but fashion and beauty but who, I think, really means well in terms of Mulligan's relations with Sarsgaard.

These are about all the characters and about all the plot. There are a few surprises, but the big surprise is how fresh and exciting this old material is made by writer Nick Hornby and director Lone Scherfig developing a memoir by Lynn Barber that I gather is accurately interpreted, with the slight problem of having to squeeze everything into feature length when you know the developments took a good amount of time as suspicions were gradually shifted and steps carefully prepared. Acting is consistently fine, there is admirable restraint where we could be flooded with melodrama and sentiment, production values are luxuriant to just the right extent, dialogue is literate and thoughtful.

There's nothing terribly new about An Education, but such quality is never easy to find.