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Author Topic: An Education  (Read 6441 times)

philip918

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Re: An Education
« Reply #30 on: December 28, 2009, 03:34:02 PM »
I just don't get this argument at all FLY.  You can keep hammering at it, but that's just a different film altogether.

She's not a girl who lost 4 years of high school to her new life, but a semester or so.  She had solid A's in everything but Latin.  Everything pointed to her being one of the best and brightest students in her class.  There are some people who have a powerful drive to succeed and do great things, she was one of those people.

I'm not a fan of the last ten minutes, but mostly for how it was handled cinematically, not thematically.

chardy999

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Re: An Education
« Reply #31 on: December 28, 2009, 06:37:34 PM »
I'm not a fan of the last ten minutes, but mostly for how it was handled cinematically, not thematically.

Ding!
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Colleen

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Re: An Education
« Reply #32 on: December 28, 2009, 06:47:33 PM »
I'm not a fan of the last ten minutes, but mostly for how it was handled cinematically, not thematically.

Ding!

Exactly.

I don't get why it's so unbelievable that that could happen to anyone when that's the way things actually worked out for the author of the memoir the movie was based on. 


But I'm never going to get it and I really don't want to beat my head on a wall anymore so I will just draw the line here for my participation by saying that I find the story of a protagonist acting in a misguided way tat leads to disaster, but pulling back just at the moment of going over the precipice by the combination of her decision to change direction AND someone else reaching out a helping hand at the crucial moment to be not only believable but suspenseful and ultimately fulfilling.

I have not been able to get my hands on the actual memoir (apparently the decision was made to substitute the publication of Nick Hornby's screenplay for a US publication of the memoir, probably because the events of the movie are one section of the memoir and the rest is very British-specific stories of her journalistic career) but Granta published the relevant segment as part of its "Life's Like That" themed issue several years ago and I have that on order.  I'll let you know how it stacks up against the movie.

IDrinkYourMilkshake

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Re: An Education
« Reply #33 on: January 04, 2010, 07:29:26 AM »
Il jump on the "badly handled ending" bandwagon. Its a BBC film, so most likely explaination for it is that they had to cut budget to buy Wossy a new ivory backscratcher.  >:(

Peter Sarsgaard is perfectly cast  - one of the reasons Garden State is one of the greatest twist films of all time is that his character turns out to be the good guy!   -  he's got one of those bad guy faces like Aaron Eckhart or Zooey "Satan" Deschanel.

I thought Alfred Molina veered a little too closely to 'comedy 60's dad' at times, but on the whole the part was brilliantly written exposing (what i imagine to be) the nature of parenthood - he obviously wants whats best for his daughter, but how is he really to know what that is without hindsight? So he flip flops between wanting her to go to Oxford to approving the marriage. I also thought Olivia Williams character came a little too close to characature too.

But the voice over at the end was misplaced, caught me totally off guard and drew me out of the film.

I think that for all the good performances and quality of the writing the inner class warrior in me prevented me from really enjoying this, though.

« Last Edit: January 04, 2010, 07:32:10 AM by IDrinkYourMilkshake »
"What should have been an enjoyable 90 minutes of nubile, high-school flesh meeting a frenzy of blood-caked blades, becomes instead an exploitational and complex parable of the conflicting demands of agrarianism and artistry. I voted a miss."

mañana

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Re: An Education
« Reply #34 on: January 07, 2010, 03:10:35 AM »
An Education (Lone Scherfig, 2009)

It’s OK. Definitely worth seeing for Carey Mulligan, who’s something special for sure, but the writing is just so simplistic and thin. I’ll watch this one with my teenage daughters one day.
Grade: B-
« Last Edit: January 07, 2010, 02:08:43 PM by matt the movie watcher »
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oneaprilday

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Re: An Education
« Reply #35 on: February 02, 2010, 03:21:31 AM »
That's about the grade I'd give it, matt. Mulligan was very good, but I'm surprised, really, at how much people love this film. Hope to have time to write more thoughts tomorrow.

FLYmeatwad

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Re: An Education
« Reply #36 on: February 02, 2010, 09:01:15 AM »
Excellent, more people on the winning team.

BooNo7

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Re: An Education
« Reply #37 on: February 02, 2010, 12:27:58 PM »
Hi, If you want to see more of Carey Mulligan, check out the Dr Who episode 'Blink' in which she plays the central character, Sally Sparrow. This story is one of the best without Dr Who being the main focal point all thanks to the excellent acting by Miss Mulligan and a great script!

mañana

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Re: An Education
« Reply #38 on: February 02, 2010, 12:38:25 PM »
That's about the grade I'd give it, matt. Mulligan was very good, but I'm surprised, really, at how much people love this film. Hope to have time to write more thoughts tomorrow.
Yeah, it's pleasant enough, but I think passion for this film is directly correlated to how smitten the viewer is with Mulligan.
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oneaprilday

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Re: An Education
« Reply #39 on: February 02, 2010, 02:19:36 PM »
That's about the grade I'd give it, matt. Mulligan was very good, but I'm surprised, really, at how much people love this film. Hope to have time to write more thoughts tomorrow.
Yeah, it's pleasant enough, but I think passion for this film is directly correlated to how smitten the viewer is with Mulligan.
:)  The friend whom I went to see the movie with said exactly the same thing to me after the film. It's interesting because both of us were predisposed to like the film - no, not just like it, love it. We both love all things British, we'd both seen Mulligan in BBC's Bleak House and liked her very much in that - but we both felt rather blank at the end of the film. Yes, Mulligan is good - but we knew that already, and we noted that her character was really not that far removed from her character in Bleak House, so we haven't seen that she can be a completely transcendent actress, not yet anyway. The film as a whole, as you say, just felt very thin. (Such a shame, too, that Thompson and Hawkins were given such pathetically small and cliched roles.)

 

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