Notes on a Scandal
|
List Price: Our Price: $2.41 You Save: $12.57 (84%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Notes on a Scandal
Movie Review: Dench and Blanchett are overwhelmingly powerful in this film
Summary: 5 Stars
I was not prepared to see such a powerful film and I must attribute my reaction to the incredible acting of Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett. It is a film about a young woman who makes some poor decisions that spin out of control and destroys her life and her family. However, there is an added twist in that a very lonely, unhappy, and devious colleague uses the situation to meet some long festering unmet needs. Sheba, played by Cate Blanchett, is an art teacher, newly hired into a high school. She makes the tragic mistake of beginning a sexual affair with a 15 year old boy, a totally losing proposition that can only end in disaster. Sheba's husband is older than she, possibly by the same age spread as between her and the young fellow with whom she becomes lovers. All of the motives behind Sheba's mistaken choices are never fully revealed, but I found this to be highly realistic for we all have loved ones and family and friends who make terrible choices and we never fully understand how in the world they would make such terrible choices. The affair becomes known to Barbara, a history teacher, played to absolute perfection by Judi Dench. Barbara is one of the most complex and interesting characters to show up in a film in years and Dench is incredible in her portrayal of this warped and lost soul. Barbara is a desperate and lonely woman, living in a semi-fantasy world, who uses this knowledge to gain intimacy with Sheba, on whom she has a sexual obsession. Thus the brilliance of the film is that Sheba is somewhat of a sympathetic figure because we gradually learn that the boy is highly manipulative and that Sheba has become a wounded butterfly that is gradually falling into Barbara's web. It is also a strength of the film that Barbara is not played as crazy or as a 2-dimensional villain but rather as a pathetic lonely woman living in a world of imagined romance and intimacy. She mistakenly thinks that power over another woman would be the key to bring someone into her lonely life as her partner. Judi Dench portrays Barbara as a complex lonely human being who mistakenly thinks she can capture and control intimacy. The characters in this film feel fully human. Of course it is the screenplay as well as the actors who create this illusion of entering into the painful world of others and the script is haunting. Needless to say the film is for adults only due to its complex and controversial subject matter and such a tragic situation can only end badly for everyone involved.
Movie Review: creme de la creme performances
Summary: 5 Stars
after i saw this film, i was so troubled. haunted, even. judi dench and cate blanchett have dug down to the depths of their formidable technique and produced two indelible portraits of flawed womanhood.
dench plays barbara covett, a repressed, lonely school teacher who is didactic and unfeeling in her approach to both students and colleagues. into her life comes blanchett as sheba hart, a fleshly, younger art instructor for the school. covett becomes interested, then obsessed in hart. her obsession turns toxic when she becomes aware of a sexual relationship between hart and one of her young art stuents.
perhaps the most troubling aspect of each woman is that they are active participants in the destruction that they bring to themselves and each other. and equally troubling is that they are total opposites that fit inside each other. sheba is weak and easily puzzled; barbara is devious and manipulative. these characteristics, undiluted as they are, can cause trouble for some viewers. they want explanations of why people are so deviant. but isn't true that some explanations are theory, and theory is mostly unproven? then proof comes from extensive study and still dench and blanchett are victors because students of great acting will be studying these performances for years to come in an effort to figure out these women on some level.
dench and blanchett are nothing short of amazing in this film. and to know that there's more coming from both is so comforting. this is not flash in the pan stuff here. these performances are definitely career builders!
the actresses are well supported by the men in the film, including bill nighy as sheba's husband and andrew simpson as the seemingly fresh-faced, troubled young boy involved with sheba.
the screenplay is adapted from a literate well written book by zoe heller. but as the book is written mostly from barbara's perspective, the screenwriter had a formidable challenge in opening up the story and making situations pop with melodrama. and he does! it's a great job.
yes--this is melodrama. and the only reminder is philip glass' overemotional score. this is a surprise from someone that has written some of the most cerebral, sparse music for dance, film and the concert hall in the past 40-odd years. 'notes' does let a viewer know that melodrama can still have drive sweep and intense, break-neck performances from actors that are at the top of their game.
Movie Review: Highsmith Meets Hitchcock
Summary: 5 Stars
This GENIOUS story/movie can only be compared to such greats as Patricia Highsmith and Alfred Hitchcock when it comes to writing or film. Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett are superb as two English school teachers caught up in a nasty affair. Judi is a strict old maid named Barbara who narrates the story as entries into her journal. She is desperate for love and soon becomes friends with Sheba (Blanchett), who is the new teacher in town who Barbara plans to seduce.
However, Sheba is married with two kids, and soon begins an affair of her own with a 15 year old male student. Barbara discovers the affair and uses it as blackmail to get closer to Sheba. Shame on Sheba, right? Not really. By the time you learn of the affair Sheba is having with her student, you almost have entire sympathy for her as a character. The fact that one of her kids has down syndrome certainly helps you to feel sorry for her as well. She's so weak and fragile, but it's fun to watch Barbara the minx pounce on her like a little mouse, threatening to expose all if she doesn't get her way.
There is one scene where Barbara forces Sheba to choose between getting in the car with her persistent family to go watch her son in his first school play, or accompany Barbara to see after her dying cat at the vet. Barbara is in tears and hugs Sheba for comfort. The she throws her friendship with Sheba on the line and threatens to expose the affair right then and there to Sheba's husband.
When she doesn't get her way, Barbara plants a bug in another teacher's ear and sits back to watch the fun begin. Sheba is exposed. Her marriage ruined. She has no one to turn to except for...Barbara...who is right there waiting to comfort and console. But, Sheba discovers Barbara's journals and her schemes are exposed. Sheba goes mad! Barbara is mad! Someone must die, right? Leave that to Hitchcock! But you will be just as shocked!
The haunting soundtrack from composer Philip Glass is just as mesmorizing as Dench and Blanchett in their roles. Dench's quick tongue as a strict teacher, and in her journal entries, make for some great humor you will definitely appreciate. She's a nasty lil character you'll grow to hate and love all at the same time, yet you'll be feeling sorry for her by the end. It's all a mad plot that only such excellent writers az Zoe Heller could contrive. Pure brilliance!
Movie Review: Notes of Brilliance
Summary: 5 Stars
`Notes on a Scandal' at first glance may be off putting for its subject matter. Taking taboo content, the movie walks a tightrope, yet provides plenty of wit and intelligence. Elderly teacher, Barbara (Judi Dench) narrates her journal as she reflects, "People have always trusted me with their secrets, but whom can I trust with mine...You...," she confides. You becomes Sheba Hart, (Kate Blanchet), a new art teacher at their London St. George's School. With sarcastic wit, Barbara reflects upon her disdain of Sheba, which comes off as "fox and grapes" jealousy. Describing herself as a "battle-axe" and ruling with "cattle prod and prey," Barbara, despite her credentials, has an incomplete existence. Breaking up a key fight involving two students that Sheba could not contain, Barbara makes her young beneficiary feel beholden. Naturally, the two start to bond with dinners at Sheba's house. Here the husband (Bill Nighy) is noticeably older than Sheba, and she is burdened with a daughter who has a demandingly perky adolescence and a son who has Down's Syndrome. Stretched resources to the fullest, she feels a group of needs being unmet. Sheba starts to unbosom to her sage older friend. Mutually, they serve each other well--especially, later when Barbara glimpses her having sexual relations with one of her students. With professional and legal considerations, Barbara offers some advice that may be beneficial to them both.
Suspicious, I thought 'Notes on a Scandal' would be an enabling event that tried to soft-pedal or exploit a taboo not meant to be broken. The news headlines have already broken through, and 'Notes on a Scandal' is good at unraveling the abusive depravity while offering a revealing cross-section of human nature. The performances are so excellent that all previous assessments almost seem rash or overdone. Director, Richard Eyre and screenwriter Patrick Marber have assembled a singular achievement. Furthermore, Philip Glass provides an effective score with both traditional and innovative elements--just as brilliant as the movie. With witty dialogue and a scintillating story, 'Notes on a Scandal' is a film to bookmark. (Based on a novel by Zoe Heller.)
Movie Review: Judy Dench Gets A Gold Star
Summary: 5 Stars
Barbara (Judi Dench), a strict, prissy, judgmental, lonely middle-aged teacher in a London high school, is a wicked spider spinning her web to ensnare the very sensuous Sheba (Cate Blanchett), a new young teacher at the school. Sheba is married to an older man, played by Bill Nighy, but she lets her passions get the best of her, falls for and has intimate relations with a fifteen-year-old student, well-played by Andrew Simpson. Termagant Barbara keeps a diary in which she posts gold stars for her best days. It's a thriller with lots of suspense as we follow Barbara on her pursuit of the younger woman. When she finds out about the clandestine taboo affair, the cradle robbing, she doesn't mind a little blackmail to get her prize.
The acting is superb, the story gripping. In voice overs Barbara describes her machinations and her all-consuming obsession with Sheba. She gets invited to Sheba's home, a noisy household, where the father maintains a bohemian lifestyle with his kids, one a prickly teenage daughter and a boy suffering from Down Syndrome. Barbara is seeking an intimacy with her prey, Sheba. She talks about "life as you dream it and life as you live it."
"Barbara says of Sheba, "She's the one I've waited for." and "We are bound by the secrets we share." Barbara's previous friendship with a woman had unraveled, and the woman left London to get away from possessive, controlling Barbara who says, "They always let you down in the end." Barbara is a devil, a witch, rhymes with b----.
Barbara's beloved cat dies, and Barbara wants Sheba to give up family obligations to mourn for the cat which she refuses to do.
The soundtrack heightens the melodramatic mood. The movie has a dramatic supercharged ending. The dialogue is clever and literate. When Sheba gets caught, Barbara gets in deep trouble too. Sheba's finding of gold stars on the floor of Barbara's apartment leads to the climactic scenes. At the end Barbara, the undeterred predator, is searching out new prey.
Dench is superb, spot-on in the flick, playing a harridan, a woman who deserves pity rather than compassion.