An Education: A Review (Review #55)

AN EDUCATION

Teach Your Children Well...

The bad thing about experience is that it teaches you after the fact. This appears to be at the heart of An Education, a respectable film about the conflict between pursuing dreams for a potentially bright future or going after a dazzling present.

Jenny (Carrie Mulligan) is a bright British girl who yearns for a life away from her respectable middle-class life, epitomized by her parents Jack and Marjorie (Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour). She is into all the things they are not: music, the arts, French. In short, she is desperate to discover the world her parents seem almost afraid of, to break away from respectability. 

While waiting for a bus in the rain, she meets David Goldman (Peter Sarsgaard). He seems her ideal man. He is older, more worldly, more sophisticated. He also happens to be Jewish, but none of this matter to her. David charms her and her parents and soon whisks Jenny in his world, one where people go to auctions, attend concerts, and stimulate her intellect.  

As she is swept into this new world, she seems to forget all about Oxford and of Graham (Matthew Beard) the young boy who is clearly smitten with her. David's relationship with Jenny is complex: not quite sexual but not quite intellectual either. In spite of his bourgeois antisemitism Jack is all too eager to have David squire his daughter out. He even seems pleased that perhaps with David as a potential husband, Jenny might not need to go to university. However, Jenny soon senses that things are not as they appear with David or his friends Danny and Helen (Dominic Cooper and Rosamund Pike). Will she be swept up into la dolce vita or find that, as stodgy as her background is, it is far better and more real than what David offers?

An Education is a strong portrait of a girl who comes of age in every way possible. It would be difficult to portray the situation of a man in his 30s having any kind of relationship with a girl about to turn 17 without it looking sordid. However, director Lone Scherfig and screenwriter Nick Hornby never make it salacious or tawdry. This is due primarily to the fact that the story centers more about Jenny's mental and emotional growth than to her sexual awakening. 

As portrayed by Mulligan, Jenny is already in some ways quite mature, but in other ways terribly naïve. She balances her intelligence, innocence and yearnings brilliantly. Jenny knows there is something off about David, but she also knows he's opened up a world she wouldn't have encountered without him. Her performance reveals a young girl who wants to be sophisticated and cultured, but who is clearly not. The desire for something new, foreign and exciting is there, but so is her lack of wisdom.

Sarsgaard, the sole American in the cast, also manages to make David likeable and charming but also complex. We never fully understand his motivations when it comes to Jenny. A plot twist would make us think it involved lust, but we also see that he too is conflicted, drawn to her mind and intellect but also to her body. Sarsgaard deserves credit for having a believable British accent. Despite his actions and the truth about him, we do not hate David even though we, like Jenny, should.

Even the smaller performances are handled deftly. Dominic Cooper and Rosamund Pike, early in their careers, are excellent in An Education. Pike is charming and supportive of Jenny. She, however, is also vulnerable and accepting of a situation that she should not accept. Cooper as David's partner-in-crime shows himself as a charmer with surprisingly fewer scruples than David. Although she has only one scene, Sally Hawkins makes an impression in a small but critical role.

Alfred Molina in my view merited a Best Supporting Actor nomination for An Education. He is just as worthy of the recognition as Mulligan, who did receive a Best Actress nomination for the film.  His Jack was not a bad man. He was instead a man of his time, who genuinely loved his daughter and wanted what he thought was the best for her. In his flustered mannerism, his great concern over bills, Molina balanced humor with heart.  

Special mention should be given to Emma Thompson as Mrs. Walters, the Headmistress at Jenny's school. While she has only two scenes in the film, she leaves a strong impact. The first time that I saw An Education, I found myself quickly loathing her and thinking she was cruel. The second time, I thought that Mrs. Walters was right, at least when it came to Jenny's poor decisions. Mrs. Walters' antisemitism is still wrong. However, An Education does well to show that the opposition to Jenny and David's relationship was not based on this factor alone or that it was even a factor. 

"I suppose you think I'm a ruined woman," Jenny remarks with sarcasm in her tone when her engagement is off, and she is denied reentry to the school. "You're not a woman," Mrs. Walters scoffs before drinking her tea. This, I think, partially captures the theme of An Education: the evolution of Jenny from a girl with intellectual pretentions to an evolving woman who learned from her errors. "Just treat me like a grownup," Jenny says to I believe David. That sums up what An Education is about: Jenny's desires, both mental and physical. 

As a side note, we know that there is something curious in David when he convinces Jenny's parents to let her go up to Oxford so that she can meet C.S. Lewis, whom David refers to as Clive. For someone who has a cursory knowledge of Lewis, we know he and his circle never called him 'Clive' but 'Jack'. An intimate of the professor and Christian apologist would have known that, and the fact that David didn't should have been the first clue.

The film also captures the cultural zeitgeist of early 1960's Britian. Shifting from postwar austerity to the more swinging era, we see that in Paul Englishby's score, going from jazzy and jaunty to lush and mournful. 

The one issue I raise about An Education has to do with her parents. I wondered why Jack and Marjorie seemed so oblivious to the fact that the man who was all but in name courting their daughter was obviously twice her age. That struck me as quite odd, and I had those doubts as I left. Were they dumb, clueless, or too dazzled by David to see what was going on?

As it is, An Education lives up to the title. Jenny learns through experiences of all kinds who she is, what is important, and how to take what she has learned to avoid the mistakes she's seen others make. Her experiences have made her a far better woman than she would have been without them, and she has learned well. 

An Education is a film that I think should be revisited every few years. We can see how our perspective can change from seeing Jenny as a wise-beyond-her-years rebel to seeing her as a girl with a somewhat pretentious view of herself. We all benefit from going back for more of An Education. 

DECISION: B+