An Education

These are my notes for this week's screening:

An Education


UK 2009 (95 minutes)

Director: Lone Scherfig

Starring: Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Dominic Cooper, Rosamund Pike and Emma Thompson

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for three Oscars: Best Film, Best Actress (Carey Mulligan) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Nick Hornby)

• A further 18 wins and 45 nominations including a BAFTA Award for Best Actress for Carey Mulligan and seven further nominations including Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Outstanding British Film

In 1961 London Jenny Millar (Carey Mulligan), a 16 year old schoolgirl in the process applying to Oxford, meets a charming older man David Goldman (Peter Sarsgaard) who starts taking her out and then charms her parents into accepting the relationship. Jenny eventually realises that Goldman is a con man, but nonetheless accepts his proposal of marriage and drops out of school – and then she discovers that he is already married. Jenny returns to school to renew her studies and next year is accepted at Oxford.

The film is based on an autobiographical memoir by the journalist Lynn Barber who as a schoolgirl had an affair with conman Simon Prewalski, an associate of Peter Rachman before reading English at St Anne’s College Oxford. The script is by Nick Hornby, better known as the author of novels such as Fever Pitch, About A Boy, and High Fidelity, who explained in an interview what drew him to the story:

“She’s a suburban girl who’s frightened that she’s going to get cut out of everything good that happens in the city. That, to me, is a big story in popular culture. It’s the story of pretty much every rock ‘n’ roll band.”

The story also has echoes of the kitchen-sink dramas of the 1960s like Billy Liar and A Taste of Honey although the trouble that Jenny gets to is the – potential – loss of her Oxford career. The film concludes with Jenny at Oxford remarking in a voiceover: “I probably looked as wide-eyed, fresh and artless as any student. But I wasn’t.” This is, if anything, an understatement: as Lynn Barber revealed during a recent appearance on Desert Island Discs, she managed to sleep with more than 50 men during two terms at Oxford.

Carey Mulligan received unanimous praise for her performance as Jenny in what was only her second film appearance. She played Kitty Bennet in Joe Wright’s version of Price and Prejudice (2005) and then spent three years playing leading roles in a number of TV programmes including Ada Clare in Bleak House and Sally Sparrow in Blink (one of the best Doctor Who stories ever). Following the international success of An Education she was cast in a co-starring role in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010), Oliver Stone’s sequel to Wall Street (1987) and will appear shortly in a starring role with Keira Knightley in Never Let Me Go (2010), from the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, which will receive its first screening at the 2010 London Film Festival.

Up In The Air

These are my film notes for our first screening which is due to take place on Thursday 16th September:

Up in the Air

USA 2009 (109 minutes)

Director: Jason Reitman

Starring: George Clooney, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for 6 Oscars: Clooney (Best Actor), Farmiga (Best Supporting Actress), Kendrick (Best Supporting Actress), Best Film, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay

• A further 44 wins and 53 nominations (including BAFTA nominations for Clooney, Farmiga and Kendrick)

“In one sense, it’s a movie about a man who fires people for a living. In another sense, it’s a movie about a man who collects air miles excessively. In another sense it’s about a man who meets a woman who’s so similar to him that even though they both believe in the idea of living solo, they begin to fall in love.”

Jason Reitman

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) loves his job as an outplacement counsellor, travelling around the US laying off staff for managers too cowardly to do it for themselves and aiming to achieve a personal goal of earning ten million frequent flyer air miles with American Airlines. He is enjoying a casual relationship with Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga), another frequent flyer, but his footloose life becomes complicated when his boss asks him to mentor the dynamic Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) who has developed a new method of lay-off using a webcam which saves money by reducing the need for expensive air travel.

Reitman wrote the screenplay with Sheldon Turner and, although it is based loosely on a novel by Walter Kim, stated that he wrote the three main parts with Clooney, Farmiga and Kendrick in mind. Both Reitman and Clooney were aware of the apparent similarities between Clooney’s public persona and the role he played, and Reitman confirmed that the casting of Clooney was key to the success of the film:

“If you're going to make a movie about a guy who fires people for a living and you still want to like him, that actor better be damn charming and I don't think there’s a more charming actor alive than George Clooney. I was very lucky he said yes.”

In his review of the film Philip French described George Clooney as giving his best performance to date and the character of Bingham as the best role that he has played: Bingham is “Arthur Miller’s Willie Loman reshaped as a romantic hero for the post-industrial world, burdened not by a case of samples but credit cards”.

But the film is very much an ensemble piece and both Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick won much praise for their supporting performances. Prior to her success in Up in the Air Vera Farmiga was better known as a stage actress, although she did appear memorably as the Mother in The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas (2008). Anna Kendrick played the role of Jessica in Twilight before being cast in this film, and has subsequently played the same character in each of the sequels. Her most recent role is in Scott Pilgrim vs the World (2010).

Jason Reitman is the son of Ivan Reitman who directed the two Ghostbuster films in the 1980s. His first film as a director was Thank You For Smoking (2005) but he made his name with the multi-award winning Juno (2007).

The Dench Factor

Each year we do our best to select a programme of films that we hope will be enjoyed by as many people in the village as possible, but with certain exceptions - The History Boys and Elizabeth: The Golden Age - we can never tell what will bring in the punters.  However as we looked back over the attandence figures for our screenings - our treasurer keeps a careful note of members and non-members attending each film - it was possible to discern one factor that most of them shared.  Notes on a Scandal, Mrs Henderson Presents and Casino Royale all drew substantial audiences, and the common factor was that they all starred Judi Dench.

We obviously cannot schedule a full programme of Ms Dench's cinematic work, so instead I've decided to institute a new rating system in order to give our piunters a chance to assess the merits of each film in relation to Judi Dench: I shall call it the Dench Factor.

There will be various categories, depending on the involvement (or not) of Ms Dench as follows:

Dench Factor 5: JD in a starring role.
Dench Factor 4: JD in a co-starring role.
Dench Factor 3: leading actor/actress appeared in a film with JD
Dench Factor 2: supporting actor/actress appeared in a film with JD
Dench Factor 1: actor/actress appeared in a film with someone who had appeared in a film with JD

On this basis Notes on a Scandal and Mrs Henderson Presents both merit a rating of Dench Factor 5 (my system does not offer any guarantee on the quality of the film, but you can forgive Stephen Frears for Mrs Henderson Presents when you see The Queen or Tamara Drewe).  In the same way Casino Royale earns a Dench Factor 2, and Elizabeth: The Golden Age is Dench Factor 3.  Sadly Up In The Air is only Dench Factor 1 (George Clooney starred with Cate Blanchett in The Good German, and CB starred with JD in Notes on a Scandal), but for some reason it seems to be generating a good deal of interest. 

I may need to rework my system to allow for the Clooney Effect.