An Education

Lots of people in the film media have been getting very excited about this, a new British artsy film about growing up in the 1960s. Clearly you would expect the cinemas to be all over a British film with an up-and-coming young actress? Wouldn't you? Well only the Vue cinemas around my way had it on. The pit of despair that is the Bracknell Odeon will probably have it on the "director's chair" in 5 months time - epic fail.

Well I'm glad I went to the trouble of driving into Reading on a Wednesday after work for this fantastically acted and character-driven story a sixteen-year-old in the early 1960s who thinks she knows a lot, but learns she knows nothing. The heroine of the film is Jenny - played without fault by Carey Mulligan. She is a young girl on the up in a male-dominated world. She aspires to go the university, she has supportive and surprisingly liberal parents and has used her intelligence and charm to make herself one of the popular ones in school. She appears to come from a family who are not hard-up, but who have had to work hard for what they have and clearly appreciate their current lifestyle. A chance encounter with an older man (David – played by Peter Sarsgaard) changes this.

Suddenly Jenny (and her parents too) is swept off her feet by David's charisma, experience, knowledge of the world and money. Suddenly she realises that there's no point in getting an education if all it is going to mean is a long and difficult life working for not much. Why not have it all now - just as David offers? Jenny's parents are carried along for the ride too. In an age when the prevailing method of bringing up a girl was still to find a man to marry her off on to, even Jenny's father agrees that there's no point her going to Oxford any more.

Through this story the film asks some really interesting questions about modern British society. What is the point of getting educated if all that is going to happen to you is that you end up with a dead-end job? Why not try and live a life that's fast and loose while you're young? As Jenny asks of her headmistress, "you have to tell us what education is for!"

A big theme in the film is how people act out of convenience, how we can ignore obvious truths when it suits us to avoid reality. Jenny ignores David's obviously criminal activity, David's friend ignores the stunning stupidity of his girlfriend because she's hot and he's attracted to her, Janny's teacher Miss Stubbs lives in denial that the girls she teaches appreciate what she does and Jenny's parents ignore the obvious and slightly worrying age gap between her and David because he's a charmer and clearly well-off. I guess that in this way the film is about compromises that people make in. How far will the characters go in deluding themselves in order to have a trouble-free and enjoyable life? Will Jenny throw away the promise of her youth in search of fun and wealth?

One big drawback of the film was a terrible montage ending that neatly wrapped everything up in 2 minutes. The film could have ended much more satisfyingly a few minutes beforehand - still on the same note but not feeling rushed. This is a fairly minor point though compared to everything else. 'An Education' is funny, intelligent and fantastically acted by a great cast. British film of the year anyone?