Oleanna
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Movie Reviews of Oleanna
Movie Review: You won't be the same after watching it...
Summary: 4 Stars
This film should come with a warning: "Danger! For David Mamet fans only!"It isn't unlikely that the uninitiated will enjoy the film. It is a very good film. However, those for whom this is their first Mamet film may find themselves confused or uncomfortable and thus, unable to enjoy the film for what it is. Better that they start with something easier like "The Edge" and then move onto something like "The Winslow Boy" or "The Spanish Prisoner" and thence to "House of Games" before trying something challenging like "Glengarry" or "Oleanna".
All of Mamets tricks are here... his love of the telephone as a means to interrup conversations and his use of the one-sided conversation to add depth to the story. Mamet's stacatto dialog which its odd combination of 40s gangster-aggression and dry, professorial wit is rarely more purely distilled than it is here.
Watching this film is like drinking 151 rum in neat shots. It isn't for everyone but those who can do it will have one hell of a ride.
One thing I really like about Mamet's stuff is that he doesn't create "strawman" characters. I read once that the Chess Master Bobby Fisher learned the game by playing both sides equally hard because he couldn't find a worthy opponent.
Many writers may claim to attempt this when creating confrontations between their characters but Mamet is one of the few who succeeds brilliantly. The tagline "whichever side you take, you're wrong" is not only clever, it is very true. They could just as easily replaced "wrong" with "right". Why didn't they?
Read Mamet's book "Three Uses of the Knife" for his explanation of why the Arthur Miller play "Death of a Salesman" couldn't have been called "Life of a Salesman" and you'll understand.
I wish Mr. Mamet a long a prolific career. Keep 'em coming!!
p.s. I read on the DVD box that when this play was first performed at a university, a group of angry students confronted Mamet and one of them accused him of "political irresponsibility". Here's hoping that Mr. Mamet continues to annoy and irritate foolish people like that for many years to come.
Movie Review: Can You Say 'Nut Case' Boys and Girls?
Summary: 4 Stars
Funny, only one other reviewer here noticed, or had the guts, to state the obvious: the girl in this movie is OBVIOUSLY delusional and in need of psychotherapy. But I digress...
Alright, here's the truth about this movie. The always-great Macy plays a middle-aged college professor who offers help to one of his failing students, in this case a young woman with CLEAR psychological problems. The student in question blows a simple misunderstanding into a full blown sexual harassment charge aimed at destroying the professor, which in turn would mean losing his hard-earned tenure. Any NORMAL woman would CLEARLY have seen the misunderstanding for what it was: A MISUNDERSTANDING, and consequently drop the matter entirely. Not so the student-from-hell in this film. She not only misconstrues the professors intentions, she goes on a personal vendetta with the single-minded purpose of a shark hunting a baby seal (only the shark is more intelligent), whereas the girl comes accross as a moron with schizo-affective disorder. She tries to completely and utterly destroy the man.
Just when you think it couldn't possibly get any better, things go from bad to worse. What happens next could only take place in the mind of someone in desperate need of thorazine: She accuses the professor of RAPING her.
Can you say 'nut case' boys and girls?
I enjoyed this movie only because of Macy, who in my opinion is one of the most underrated actors of our times. However the movie is a bit unrealistic in that most men would have either walked away from this girl completely, told one of their peers about it soon enough to make others aware of the situation, OR - and this is what most men would have done if it came to the same point as it did in the movie. Hire a lawyer!
Movie Review: Whichever side you take, you're wrong
Summary: 4 Stars
David Mamet's screen adaption of the play (also written by Mamet) is an extraordinary journey into the world of perception. The film has only two characters, one being a college professor (played by William H Macy) and a shy young student (played by Debra Eisenstadt) even though these two characters are the only prominent players in the story; the director manages to develop a nerve retching, edge of your seat thriller that will have you thinking during the credits.
The film begins with carol (the shy student) that is failing a college course and is really eager to pass her class. She tries to convince her professor of giving her a second chance at passing the class. the professor has no interest in doing so, the student insists. This is pretty much the whole story a feedback between student and professor, between the so called experienced and the amateur. the story gets in to full thriller mode when carol begins to blackmail her professor, claiming that he harassed and intended to rape her. The films climax is also amazing and it will leave you wondering as to what you would do in that type of situation.
MY PERSONAL RATING: 3 ½ out of 5
Movie Review: title of review
Summary: 4 Stars
This is the most intelligent movie I've ever seen. This is far from the typical arty/intellectual movie approach of using vague abstraction to distance a film from any responsibilty for making a clear statement or even having a clear narrative. It's basically just a battle of wits between the two characters, but it's totally enthralling. Many times one character would make a statement, and the other would come back with a response that would leave me thinking "y'know I might not have looked at it that way, but what was said really makes a lot of sense".I found the ending melodramatic and disappoining though. I had the impression that the two characters were both intelligent enough, and valued the truth enough, that they would have reached some reasonable conclusion. Maybe I misread the characters, but I never got the impression that either of them honestly had a distorted view of the truth or reality, they just chose to manipulate it at times.
Movie Review: An interesting misfire...
Summary: 3 Stars
I generally enjoyed this David Mamet film, but throughout the stuttered, ridiculously choppy and awkwardly timed dialogue, and "come out of nowhere" twists and turns, which keep the viewer generally guessing and interested most of the way, the final resolution is ultimately disappointing as a complete train of truthful, meaningful, logical to the end thought.
This work seemingly invites viewers into taking a side between the only two characters involved, a young, female college student and her middle-aged, male professor. But this is the wrong approach in my view because both characters are eventually portrayed as equally sharing in the blame for what transpires. And that just isn't the case. While the student here is initially portrayed as innocently questioning the prof's teaching methods, and worried about her personal performance in the teacher's class, as are her rights, her character soon turns into an over-the-top and obviously, irrationally vindictive, "bad" person (which she fully admits to being mid-film, but which is never elaborated upon).
And while the prof's eventual physically violent and angry reaction to this crazy student's despicable and false accusations and behavior, go overboard in the much too abrupt end, any truly objective viewer will easily I think, understand (if not approve of) his reactions, as opposed to hers. Almost ordering, as the student does at the end, her teacher not to call his own loved wife, "baby" because she casually "objects" to it, is insane.
The ending in this film is left up in the air as to who has the strongest case here, the student or the teacher, but it's really no contest, as far as I'm concerned. The female student is a clearly, and eventually revealed, psychologically disturbed wacko. The prof has his own faults no doubt, but that he not only tried to, but actually did "RAPE" the female student, simply by taking a caring and personal interest in her philosophical questions and anxieties, is totally specious. The truth is something quite different. This is a movie which throws out a lot of important concepts, especially as it concerns male-female relationships, and the "power over another" incongruities in general of the academic student/teacher dynamic. But in my view, it all eventually comes up short because, at the end, it paints the professor as well as the student as equal "evils." And that just isn't so, as written and presented.
I have enjoyed a lot of playwright/screenwriter/director David Mamet's other works, especially "House of Games," "Edmond," "State and Main," "About Last Night," "Wag the Dog," and "Hoffa," among many others, and his early masterpiece, "The Verdict" (best picture winner 1982), but this effort just doesn't cut it. In virtually every other Mamet film I've seen, a lot of which led the viewer to vaguely interpreted finales, where one has latent sympathies for both the good guy/gal and opposite, there's really no contest here. The graduate female student can only be considered quite deranged and simply "bad." The professor, despite his violent anger and corporal abuse at the end, seems justified in a way, and quite sane and basically decent.
While I appreciate the intent here, as in most of his films, of letting the viewer be the final judge of good and evil (most brilliantly shown in my personal Mamet favorite, "House of Games"), the student's evolving words, behavior, and totally bizarre, harsh, real-life actions she takes against her supposed "oppressor," in this movie, aren't really ever justified by the material as a whole. Or by what the prof actually says, does, or preaches. In essence, the very last scene is really what should've only been the beginning of another ten minutes or so of needed extrapolation and explanation to make the film, and its characters plausible, in which, a true balance of credibility and believable food for thought might've been offered.
What is actually presented here is just too black and white, but is erroneously painted in bogus shades of gray, and the dialogue and pacing are just too artificial and rough, and inconsistently but continually stretch the limits of credulity. Finally, the fact that any university "tenure" committee would EVER take this particular student's "complaints" seriously in the first place, with such flimsy, if non-existent hard evidence, seems highly implausible at best. Let alone such which might and does lead to the poor guy losing his tenure, his job, and basically his whole academic, financial and personal well being, without any shown hearing or trial, based solely on the deranged "word" of an obvious psycho.
Entertaining and interesting up to a point, this is definitely one of Mamet's lesser works. Given his substantial body of other great accomplishments however, this weaker effort I can only give a mediocre rating and let the viewer be the final judge. Though I'd strongly advise everyone to see (I watched it a couple of times on cable), or at least rent this before buying it, based solely upon Mamet's fine overall reputation and body of work alone.