Oleanna
by David Mamet
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Debra Eisenstadt, Diego Pineda, Scott Zigler, William H. MacyDirector: David Mamet
Brand: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; Spanish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dubbed, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 89 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-09-16
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Movie Reviews of Oleanna
Movie Review: An intense view of pure evil
Summary: 5 Stars
I have to agree with another reviewer regarding the tagline, ". . . whichever side you take, you're wrong." Well that's just not true. Any clear thinker can see the professor thinks he is interacting with a benign entity, a student who is floundering and needs his help. Unbeknownst to him, he is actually being visited by evil incarnate. Whichever side you take, you're either dead wrong or dead right.
Carol has struggled to get into college, and is now struggling to stay there at all. She is extremely frustrated. She is obviously her own worst critic, and as such is making college much more difficult than it needs to be by demanding that someone make her understand the material RIGHT NOW, and if a teacher is presenting material that is beyond her, it means she is stupid. Nobody likes feeling that. But in her mind, the teacher is actively saying that she is stupid, so she is going to make him pay. And she knows that she has no argument against him, so she does what any evil person would do: disregard the message, and destroy the messenger.
Carol is clearly a young, confused college student. Not uncommon. She has an IQ that obviously average. ("I don't understand." and "what does that mean?" about 400 times each). Common, by definition. She is naive to a degree that is disturbing. Not so common, which gives me some small amount of comfort, that people like this might be few and far between. These are her core flaws.
And then she hears her own teacher say that higher education might be a big swindle, might be a fake construct of a bygone age, might be of dubious use, and hardly anything more than a big game. The professor thinks that by making light of higher education, he might get her to stop being so tense, lighten up, and give herself a break. He deliberately provokes her in an attempt at a lively debate. He wants her to take the opposite position, argue for it, and perhaps win, all to get her to stop living in her notebook and to start THINKING.
Together, with her core flaws and the unsurprisingly low grade she has received, the result is not a flawed mind opening, but a towering rage -- a rage that badly distorts her view of the world. Her professor suddenly stops being someone who wants to help her, and morphs into: a sexist, a classist, an elitist, a patriarch, a rotten man who would use his sex, his position, his experience, his reputation, and his own "vile" belief systems to acquire power and exert it over everyone he can for his own gain. Her hatred is her rationale.
Great movie. Intense. Don't for a second believe that these two characters have opposite but equal arguments. Two arguments: one based on fact, motivated by a desire he help a student learn, the other based on a sick fantasy, motivated by a limitless desire to destroy the wrongly perceived source of a person's problems.
Mamet does it again. Whew.
Summary of Oleanna
From OscarĀ(r)-nominated* writer-director David Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross) comes this chillingly provocative, incisive drama that dissects the controversial issue of sexual harassmentfrom every emotionally wrenching side of the equation. When a college professor about to be tenured (William H. Macy, Fargo) meets a struggling student (Debra Eisenstadt) behind closed doors,their conversation yields only mutual misunderstanding and a charge of sexual harassment. And as their mutual antipathy turns ugly, it destroys lives, derails careers and ultimately leads to a cataclysmic event that no one ever expected! *1997: Adapted Screenplay, Wag the Dog (with Hilary Henkin); 1982: Adapted Screenplay, The VerdictSimilar DVD Movies
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