DEBRA EISENSTADT IS WRETCHEDLY BAD
Added 10/16/2009
I'm not going to add my voice to the conversation about what Mamet wanted to convey, one way or the other. I just wanted to make very clear my very strong opinion--Debra Eisenstadt is an ATROCIOUS actress. I know Mamet directed the movie (and I love THINGS CHANGE and HOUSE OF GAMES) but why he cast Eisenstadt is a bigger mystery than the one at the center of THE SPANISH PRISONER. She is so inept, devoid of any kind of ability to be natural--which is how Mamet writes; naturalistically. STYLISHLY naturalistic, but still--it's supposed to flow like real speech. And she is stiff and has no sense of the rhythm of the dialogue. She is flat and affectless...simply put, she SUCKS. By the end of the movie, no matter what side of the argument you fall on, you want to beat the SH-T out of her just because she CAN'T ACT.
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a critique of liberalism - SPOILERS AHEAD!
Added 10/14/2009
Oleanna is the revenge of the non liberal against the liberal. The non liberal takes the tools provided by the liberal and uses them to destroy the liberal.
The woman keeps on repeating how hard she and others had to work to get into college and how hard it is for them to stay there. They had to struggle and sacrifice. She gets into college and goes to class. She has been taught all her life how important education is and how higher education is the ticket to many excellent things in life. She sits in the classroom and the instructor tells her it is all nonsense and that higher education is a travesty and it is like a stupid fraternity ritual, some hazing ritual. He is the professor and he seems to despise what he does and what he has dedicated his working life to.
Some understand why the man takes this attitude. It is part of the liberal contempt for the United States and for the entire western world. The premise is this - that all of that is worthless and stupid, that although all of the west is bad, the US is the worst, that everything that the conventional minded seem to value, such as higher education, is a joke. Yet at the same time, it must be pursued. Education is important and so is a nice upper middle class lifestyle. Yet it is all nonsense. Anyone who suggests otherwise or who notes the contradictions is regarded as stupid, as not with it, as not cool. Such a person does not get it.
The woman does not get it. Why does the teacher affect to despise his work? Why does he stand in front of students and express disgust for the institution that employs him and the entire system it is a part of? She is prepared to study and learn. She does not understand how she is supposed to study and learn and at the same time regard the whole thing as a joke.
The man is not entirely consistent. As a good academic, he parrots the usual line. Yet he values the book that he wrote. He has pride in it. He wants his son to be proud of him. Not only that but his values appear to be solid bourgeois values. He is buying a nice new house. He wants a promotion and more money. This in turn is even more puzzling to the woman. What is he about exactly?
The man is nice. He tries to explain to her what it all means. But he can't. She cannot understand how these things are important and at the same time worthless. She asks him repeatedly, what does he mean when he says that a college education is the same as a stupid hazing in a fraternity (full of mindless frat boys, one presumes.) How is she supposed to take school seriously and yet at the same time not take it seriously? If what he says is true, then what all they all doing there? How can it all be nonsense?
As a nice man, the professor tries to help her. If she accepted his help and learned to parrot the usual line, she would have been okay and so would he. But she remains genuinely bewildered. The man, though kind, never understands her. He never understands what she is asking, although she asks it explicitly. She is very open. So is he. But they are speaking different languages. This is the truth that he cannot tell her because he cannot acknowledge it himself. The group to which I belong has the rule that we must express contempt for everything in our culture. At the same time, we must value it enough to act by its rules and garner the rewards it offers. We must express disgust for such things as big new houses as evidence of mindless American materialism. Yet at the same time, we must buy and live in such houses.
But she gets her revenge for his opacity. She takes the liberal thinking and uses it to destroy him. He thinks he is a critique of culture. She will show him what a critique really is. She will show him how every word out of his mouth, every gesture of his hand, every thought in his head is in the service of the evil oppressor. She will show him how just one word of hers, just one accusation that he oppressed her can destroy him. She needs no proof. In the liberal system which he accepts without even thinking about it, proof is not needed. All it takes is one word of hers. She out liberals him to the point of telling him how he can address his wife. She gets drunk with her power over him. "Don't call your wife baby." Then this civilized liberal man loses control, but just for a brief instant.
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The World Is Not A Sewer, David Mamet.
Added 9/17/2009
First, the problem I have with this movie. ... Then the problem I have with David Mamet.
Let's face it, in this movie both characters are up to no good. The student uses power to attack the teacher, and the teacher uses his power to belittle and harass the student.
The student was attacked verbally, at first, and then, at the end of the movie, quite clearly attacked *physically.* It doesn't matter the provocation, the teacher physically attacked the student. Likewise, the student went to far in destroying the teacher's career as well as whatever consequences occurred in his private life.
So what does that suggest David Mamet wants to say about human nature? I certainly am not the first one to maintain that David Mamet is misanthropic; it's a now-common criticism of his work and of his worldview. Add to this his recent "conversion from soft-left liberal to Milton Friedman right-wing conservative and what do you have? Someone who is (now) convinced that people are *not* essentially good at heart and therefore (and here's where the politics come in) why try to change society for the better, those lousy people out there, outside the high, well-built walls of the rich and superrich ... will only screw things up.
This has been the path others artists of Mamet's generation have taken, most notably Martin Scorcese and Woody Allen. They remind me of the line fascist-like Joseph Cotton had in Alfred Hithcock's "Shadow of a Doubt" -- "Don't you know that the world is a sewer."
I reject that. And for an artist of Mamet's talent and abilities to feel that way is worse than a violent crime, it's a crime against history. It's a crime against all those people who historically have struggled to make the world a better place. I wonder how many hours David Mamet's father and grandfather, and perhaps mother and grandmother and great grandparents worked per day, per week and under what conditions. I wonder how they would have gotten by if the army of people who fought and struggled and died for an eight-hour day and safe working conditions and the right to organize, I wonder how well they would have fared if instead of fighting these people became cynical and negative and fell in love with Corporate America (as Mamet clearly indicated in his recent left-to-right "conversion article" The Village Voice).
Here's a man who savaged capitalism and the corporate mentality in "Glengary Glenross" -- and now *loves* corporations, can't live without them, tells us that, after all, we must need and love them, they provide so many of the things we want. ... You know, like economic depressions, multi-billion dollar bailouts, slave-sweatshop labor, global warming, foul air, low-paying, dead-end jobs, ownership of the political process.
In short, what can David Mamet possible write or create in the future that speaks to the "felt-lives" of millions of people? Answer: Not a thing.
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An interesting misfire...
Added 9/9/2009
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.
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Okay Movie
Added 8/5/2009
This movie is very slow, and only focuses on two actors in the movie. It's about a student that needs help by her intructer; but takes things personal. To the point where she accuses her instructer of rape and battery. At the end of the movie, the instructer eventually loses his cool and beats his student up. Because of the students smart mouth, along with the students threats. This movie is better to watch on television; instead of buying the movie. Because this movie is very slow that is why.
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DEBRA EISENSTADT IS WRETCHEDLY BAD
Added 10/16/2009
I'm not going to add my voice to the conversation about what Mamet wanted to convey, one way or the other. I just wanted to make very clear my very strong opinion--Debra Eisenstadt is an ATROCIOUS actress. I know Mamet directed the movie (and I love THINGS CHANGE and HOUSE OF GAMES) but why he cast Eisenstadt is a bigger mystery than the one at the center of THE SPANISH PRISONER. She is so inept, devoid of any kind of ability to be natural--which is how Mamet writes; naturalistically. STYLISHLY naturalistic, but still--it's supposed to flow like real speech. And she is stiff and has no sense of the rhythm of the dialogue. She is flat and affectless...simply put, she SUCKS. By the end of the movie, no matter what side of the argument you fall on, you want to beat the SH-T out of her just because she CAN'T ACT.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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a critique of liberalism - SPOILERS AHEAD!
Added 10/14/2009
Oleanna is the revenge of the non liberal against the liberal. The non liberal takes the tools provided by the liberal and uses them to destroy the liberal.
The woman keeps on repeating how hard she and others had to work to get into college and how hard it is for them to stay there. They had to struggle and sacrifice. She gets into college and goes to class. She has been taught all her life how important education is and how higher education is the ticket to many excellent things in life. She sits in the classroom and the instructor tells her it is all nonsense and that higher education is a travesty and it is like a stupid fraternity ritual, some hazing ritual. He is the professor and he seems to despise what he does and what he has dedicated his working life to.
Some understand why the man takes this attitude. It is part of the liberal contempt for the United States and for the entire western world. The premise is this - that all of that is worthless and stupid, that although all of the west is bad, the US is the worst, that everything that the conventional minded seem to value, such as higher education, is a joke. Yet at the same time, it must be pursued. Education is important and so is a nice upper middle class lifestyle. Yet it is all nonsense. Anyone who suggests otherwise or who notes the contradictions is regarded as stupid, as not with it, as not cool. Such a person does not get it.
The woman does not get it. Why does the teacher affect to despise his work? Why does he stand in front of students and express disgust for the institution that employs him and the entire system it is a part of? She is prepared to study and learn. She does not understand how she is supposed to study and learn and at the same time regard the whole thing as a joke.
The man is not entirely consistent. As a good academic, he parrots the usual line. Yet he values the book that he wrote. He has pride in it. He wants his son to be proud of him. Not only that but his values appear to be solid bourgeois values. He is buying a nice new house. He wants a promotion and more money. This in turn is even more puzzling to the woman. What is he about exactly?
The man is nice. He tries to explain to her what it all means. But he can't. She cannot understand how these things are important and at the same time worthless. She asks him repeatedly, what does he mean when he says that a college education is the same as a stupid hazing in a fraternity (full of mindless frat boys, one presumes.) How is she supposed to take school seriously and yet at the same time not take it seriously? If what he says is true, then what all they all doing there? How can it all be nonsense?
As a nice man, the professor tries to help her. If she accepted his help and learned to parrot the usual line, she would have been okay and so would he. But she remains genuinely bewildered. The man, though kind, never understands her. He never understands what she is asking, although she asks it explicitly. She is very open. So is he. But they are speaking different languages. This is the truth that he cannot tell her because he cannot acknowledge it himself. The group to which I belong has the rule that we must express contempt for everything in our culture. At the same time, we must value it enough to act by its rules and garner the rewards it offers. We must express disgust for such things as big new houses as evidence of mindless American materialism. Yet at the same time, we must buy and live in such houses.
But she gets her revenge for his opacity. She takes the liberal thinking and uses it to destroy him. He thinks he is a critique of culture. She will show him what a critique really is. She will show him how every word out of his mouth, every gesture of his hand, every thought in his head is in the service of the evil oppressor. She will show him how just one word of hers, just one accusation that he oppressed her can destroy him. She needs no proof. In the liberal system which he accepts without even thinking about it, proof is not needed. All it takes is one word of hers. She out liberals him to the point of telling him how he can address his wife. She gets drunk with her power over him. "Don't call your wife baby." Then this civilized liberal man loses control, but just for a brief instant.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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The World Is Not A Sewer, David Mamet.
Added 9/17/2009
First, the problem I have with this movie. ... Then the problem I have with David Mamet.
Let's face it, in this movie both characters are up to no good. The student uses power to attack the teacher, and the teacher uses his power to belittle and harass the student.
The student was attacked verbally, at first, and then, at the end of the movie, quite clearly attacked *physically.* It doesn't matter the provocation, the teacher physically attacked the student. Likewise, the student went to far in destroying the teacher's career as well as whatever consequences occurred in his private life.
So what does that suggest David Mamet wants to say about human nature? I certainly am not the first one to maintain that David Mamet is misanthropic; it's a now-common criticism of his work and of his worldview. Add to this his recent "conversion from soft-left liberal to Milton Friedman right-wing conservative and what do you have? Someone who is (now) convinced that people are *not* essentially good at heart and therefore (and here's where the politics come in) why try to change society for the better, those lousy people out there, outside the high, well-built walls of the rich and superrich ... will only screw things up.
This has been the path others artists of Mamet's generation have taken, most notably Martin Scorcese and Woody Allen. They remind me of the line fascist-like Joseph Cotton had in Alfred Hithcock's "Shadow of a Doubt" -- "Don't you know that the world is a sewer."
I reject that. And for an artist of Mamet's talent and abilities to feel that way is worse than a violent crime, it's a crime against history. It's a crime against all those people who historically have struggled to make the world a better place. I wonder how many hours David Mamet's father and grandfather, and perhaps mother and grandmother and great grandparents worked per day, per week and under what conditions. I wonder how they would have gotten by if the army of people who fought and struggled and died for an eight-hour day and safe working conditions and the right to organize, I wonder how well they would have fared if instead of fighting these people became cynical and negative and fell in love with Corporate America (as Mamet clearly indicated in his recent left-to-right "conversion article" The Village Voice).
Here's a man who savaged capitalism and the corporate mentality in "Glengary Glenross" -- and now *loves* corporations, can't live without them, tells us that, after all, we must need and love them, they provide so many of the things we want. ... You know, like economic depressions, multi-billion dollar bailouts, slave-sweatshop labor, global warming, foul air, low-paying, dead-end jobs, ownership of the political process.
In short, what can David Mamet possible write or create in the future that speaks to the "felt-lives" of millions of people? Answer: Not a thing.
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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