Review: An Education

The point of a favorite artist is not that they make sense of one thing in particular, consciously, but that they seem to make sense of pretty much everything, innately, in each and every line of their work. So I wasn't sure what to expect of my favorite literary author's first screenplay, in movie form. Would that voice transcend, somehow, or would it merely retain similar content motifs? Would it seem like Nick Hornby at all?

Hornby's prose as improbable cuddling positions.

Yes, it does, eventually. When An Education get's into its 3rd act and our lead heroin begins letting it out, per se, it's Hornby all over. He tends to layer and layer and layer monotony, then, when the time is right, allows his characters to dive through those layers so that suddenly everything is very meaningful. It's a true talent he has, and it turns over a strong 3rd act, it's just that the rest isn't all that good. The Hornby voice is not present to draw us through those monotony layers - not in any way I could tell.

Movies need hooks, or cores, or whatever you want to call them. They do, even if they're invisible ones. An Education has no core, for a while. None of the characters intrigue enough, there is no immediate dillema, no obvious tone. It has real trouble with tone, this movie. Its happy moments don't seem truly happy, and it's sad ones do not seem truly sad. It's OK for a film to be tonally ambigious, with purpose, but if you can't commit to some kind of feeling within the first act, you're in trouble.

And you get the feeling, watching it, that there are jokes, or incisive moments of drama, but you can never really be sure. There is, for instance, a part where Jenny remarks about how much sex is built up by music and poetry and such, and how - eh hem - quickly it's over. This is after her first time with David, her elder co-star. David, in the background, remarks "...Yes".
...Hah...?

Which is a shame because it is a skillfully done movie. The performances are all very, very good. The direction is strong, and seems to know what it's up to. The screenplay is not at all a bad one. And yet things don't quite match up, here and there. There is a part where, very suddenly, the two leads and their supporting couple turn up at a house, and David and his friend exit their car to head inside. Jenny tries to follow, and it's David's friend who cooly reprimands her. "Stay there. I'm not going to tell you again."

Really? David didn't have anything to offer there? It would have seemed he might have. And at the auction, are they prank-bidding or really bidding? Really bidding, right? And what is David and his friend's partner thinking when Jenny and the friend dance together in that one scene? And when Jenny finds out what they were doing in that house, after David's speech, is she really that consoled and won over, or is their lingering doubt? And why does her dad like David so much right off the bat? The film complains (as Hornby books have commonly done) over the dry, lifelessness of England; it could stand to be a bit more vivid its self. 

"Do you by any chance know what we're thinking?"

And I know that part of that dullness is intentional and cooperative of that complaint, and when it all comes down to it, a real spark of life does shine from somewhere in this flick; there's too much talent in it not to. The thing is it might have been luminous had those brilliant people all come together a little better.

6/10


by Dave Beauchene