An Education (2009)

 Alfred Molina, Cara Seymour, Carey Mulligan, and Peter Sarsgaard, An Education (2009)

Directed by: Lone Scherfig
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Alfred Molina, Olivia Williams, Rosamund Pike, Emma Thompson

When you pick up the DVD case for Lone Scherfig's Academy Award nominated flick, An Education, you might be confused as to what it's about. Star-studded names lace the top of its box, Alfred Molina and Emma Thompson the most notable among them. Below that, we have the simple title and a picture of Carey Mulligan and Peter Sarsgaard, lying on the stony ground of what we will discover is Paris, France. Overall, though, we don't know what exactly this film is about from the cover... and perhaps that is what leaves us so intrigued. "An Education" is a prime example of why you cannot judge a book by its cover; it is, in fact, an emotionally complex story, one that is betrayed by the simplistic, whimsical atmosphere that its visual representation breathes.

The film opens on a rather up-beat note; we are introduced, quite quickly, to a smashingly active 1960s dance beat, and the throng of happy-go-lucky schoolgirls serves to emphasize the frivolity felt in this era. During a few of the opening clips, a youthful-looking young redhead named Jenny (Carey Mulligan) pops into view, but we might not recognize her; with her hair up on the DVD case, she looks charmingly like a young adult. Here, one could swear she's no older than fifteen or sixteen. That is, in fact, the theme of the movie: the difference between the youth that everything about Jenny perpetuates, and the adult she longs to be.

There is, then, the requirement of two different worlds for her to be living in - one, in which her father, played with amazing depth by Alfred Molina, strictly thrusts her nose into her Latin dictionary, autonomously listing off the various things he thinks the University of Oxford looks for in a potential candidate as Jenny rolls her delightfully rebellious teenage eyes, and two, in which David (Peter Sarsgaard) lives. David is introduced at first as, perhaps, another father figure, one made perhaps as a foil to her father; he is nice to Jenny, charming, and receptive to her ideas instead of forcing his own on her. He also introduces her to a world of freedom she has been searching for, one in which custom is shirked and rebellion encouraged. So much so that this rebellion must be further emphasized in his own role. Introduced as a potential father figure, the sense of opposites is so completely taken to an extreme that David himself becomes the opposite of what is expected - he falls in love with Jenny, and she with him.

On the part of Peter Sarsgaard, David at first looks to be one-dimensional. The passage to freedom, for at least forty minutes of the movie, is all he is. Shortly after the halfway point, another side of David begins to show, one where he feels his own world slipping away in favor of Jenny, and proposes to her. It is at this point that the definition of all of the principal characters begin to show - Jenny's teacher, portrayed by Olivia Williams, begins to grow worrisome of her pupil, and on the contrary, Alfred Molina, the staunch defender of law and order in the house, begins to become seduced by David's ideas, which are being slowly inserted into the fabric of his own lifestyle through Jenny. Molina, however, does not have his shining moment until later, when he stands in front of Jenny's door and apologizes for falling for David's scheme; Molina's acting draws you in, and you have no choice but to feel sympathy for him, an old man still making the mistakes his daughter cannot help but make. Throughout the film, his character pushes Jenny, claiming that no one can survive in Britain these days without "an education" - when really, it seems that no one, not even he, has a true education, and continues to learn right up until their wisest years.

Carey Mulligan was nominated for Best Actress for this film, and the nomination is gained deservingly - at one moment, she can portray the innocent schoolgirl, the wizened adult, and the star-struck lover all at the same time. Mulligan's acting culminates in a powerful scene at the end, one in which she takes every last bit of text and even the beats of silence between them, and in one fell swoop, outshines all three of her older, more experienced scene partners, among which are Alfred Molina and Peter Sarsgaard.

Another performance of note - aside from Mulligan, Sarsgaard, Molina, and Williams - is that of Rosamund Pike, who plays one of David's friends - his "aunt Helen" - and the girlfriend of the character portrayed by Dominic Cooper. At many points, she is able to portray a strict dumbness, one which Jenny is expected - by both Sarsgaard and Cooper - to emulate during their "work outings," but refuses to. Helen is the example of what Jenny could become, and Pike does a magnificent job. There are points, however, when Pike's acting reflects on a Helen that is jealous of Jenny, jealous of either the innocence she has or the knowledge she has gained, and the script is disappointingly lacking on this department, and in my opinion wastes a good opportunity in not mentioning it once in the text.

The Wall Street Journal, according to the DVD case, calls the movie "wonderfully fresh and original"; I both agree and disagree with this analysis. Jenny is not a fresh character - she is a traditional heroine in a story that takes the traditional coming-of-age story and puts a spin on it. Sarsgaard makes us believe from the moment we meet him that something is not right about David. Though he seems to be good-hearted, and one-dimensional, the audience sees the other two sides, waiting to be unveiled, but they are revealed in succession, and when his last side is revealed, we understand why this story is truly fresh. It drips of other loss of innocence stories, such as Grease or Titanic, but we find that in the end, it offers us a twist that will make this film affect you like no other story has.

An Education is a 2009 film by Lone Scherfig, starring Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, and Alfred Molina. In my opinion, this is worth at the very least a rental, if not a buy; it is easy to see how it was nominated for Best Picture, even against the other heavy-hitters. It offers the grit of The Hurt Locker and District 9 while offering the same honesty as Up and Up in the Air, and is "wonderfully fresh" to boot, if not wholly original.

Final Rating: 9.2/10
Notable Performance: Carey Mulligan as Jenny