Antigonish’s Third Eye Film Series hosts An Education
February 25, 2010 9:00 AM
Sixteen year old Jenny Muller (played by an almost unrecognizable Carey Mulligan) leads a predictably grey life in the suburbs of London–that is, until she meets David (Peter Saarsgard).
David, the archetypical charm-your-pants-off older man, introduces color to Jenny’s existence, opening her eyes to art auctions, concerts, Paris and, of course, her own sexuality.
Jenny’s experiences with David and his friends open her eyes to the concepts of ‘taste’ and ‘cultural capital,’ as well as (eventually) the apparent necessity of economic capital–an idea which, it turns out, her father will reconcile anything for.
At the start of the story, Jenny’s only dream consists of going to Oxford. When she meets David, she thinks she can have all she wants--culture--without Oxford.
In other words, she can admire the Pre-Raphaelites, play cello, read books and listen to French music without actually getting an education, as long as she has the connections and the money to do it.
In this way, writers Nick Hornby and Lynn Barber compare an Oxford education with life’s own education. It is the 1960s, cute version of The Outsiders–text books versus street cred, except street cred in An Education turns out to be ‘taste.’
However, An Education’s romantic comedy makes an abruptly tragic turn when David and his charming companions turn out to be the opposite of what they pretend to be. David himself is not the awkward, but handsome, morally-raised Jew he says he is. He is, in fact, an unhappily married sexual predator, as well as a thief and a coward, whom one can comfortably hate by the end of the story.
All secrets are revealed, of course, after Jenny has put everything on the line--specifically her education (she drops out of high school) and her virginity (accompanied by a scene with a banana that makes one too uncomfortable to even breathe, lest the person beside you notices just how uncomfortable you actually are). At this point, Jenny’s real education begins. Illusion turns into disillusion, fantasy into reality, etc.
Jenny’s education here (of which the curriculum becomes difficult to theorize) is something like, “learn from your mistakes and start over.” This she does with the help of a classic Anne Shirley-esque mentor, Miss Stubbs (Olivia Williams), who helps Jenny take her exams and eventually get accepted to Oxford.
The ending of An Education is clean and neat, like its clever narrative and pristine attention to 1960s costuming. While Tess in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Ubervilles undergoes a similar run-in with fate--a seduction by the handsome Alec D’Uberville, Jenny gets a second chance where Tess does not.
Tying up virtually all loose ends, Jenny escapes Tess’s melodramatic fate, acquiring the chance at recovery Thomas Hardy arguably wished for his own misused heroine.
The only critique perhaps available to the film is that it is too neat. Jenny’s second chance almost seems to ignore her recently acquired ‘education,’ as if it did not happen at all. She says, at Oxford, “and when the boy I was seeing asked me to go to Paris, I said ‘I would love to!’ as if I had never been before.”
The question then becomes: What was Jenny’s education? What did she learn from it, besides an awareness of accepting car-rides from older men, if she is able to erase it?
It seems as if the film both wants to endorse and brush aside the idea of a ‘life’ education, suggesting that Oxford is, actually, the best option, in regards to the two kinds of education you can get.
Arguably, at Oxford, you can learn about the Pre-Raphaelites without losing your virginity.
An Education, which has been nominated for 41 different awards, is not without merit though–not even a little bit. Carey Mulligan is stunning as Jenny, removing herself from her previous tom-boyish trademark and proving herself as a distinct ‘up-and-comer.”
Saarsgard, as well, spectacularly plays the fine line between creepy and charming, cunning and pitiable.
