Oleanna (1994)

Whichever side you take, you're wrong

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
January 10, 2008

Well done.

It is not an easy thing to attack a trendy kind of facism which makes young people feel important. Even written descriptions of this film stop short of saying whether there is sexual harrassment or not. Brilliantly done. May 31, 2007

Great story, terrible acting

Saw this on the stage and was blown away. However, in this movie version, the acting is just mechanical, wooden and unconvincing. It really spoils such a solid play. Half the time, I feel like I am watching a continuation of GlenGarry GlenRoss. May 13, 2007

Interesting Drama

This DVD version of the Mamet play has been reviewed by quite a few people in this forum. I just want to add one observation that moves away from the common perception that the play is simply about a mentally disturbed woman who employs feminist politics to presecute a college professor. That's true as far as it goes, but the play also seems to be about a college professor who digs his own grave by undermining the student's faith in the educational process and the institution that provides it. The student comes to the professor with a burning desire to learn, yet a marked inability to understand the terms in which knowledge is transmitted. The professor takes this as a legitimate criticism of traditional education, and an occasion to advance a highly idealistic view of education as the questioning of authority. Unfortunately, this is not what the student is looking for. She wants certainty, security, positive meaning, and the power that, in her mind, the possession of such knowledge confers upon the professor. She wants exactly that which the professor proceeds to denigrate. He overestimates her, which is to say that he utterly fails to understand her in her youthful confusion, yearning, and anxiety. Adrift, she finds the unambiguous truth she desires through her feminist "group", and uses this "knowledge" to turn the tables, to seize for herself the power she perceives the professor as having held over her. In so doing, of course, she destroys not only the professor, but any form of education that you or I would recognize as having value. This, then, might be seen as a comment on the politicization of the curriculum that began in higher education in the 1980s, of an advanced humanism sowing the seeds of its own destruction. The play seems to suggest that society at large cannot accommodate the insights of the humanist intellectuals, but survives on a simpler faith. Our professor destroyed that faith insofar as the student sought it in higher education, so she found it elsewhere. In a sense, his loss of nerve opens the floodgates. I think of Hitchcock's movie, "Rope", also about a professor the effect of whose words on a pair of students provides the "rope" with which he "hangs" himself, in a manner of speaking (the professor in that movie isn't the victim, but he is brought face-to-face with the consequences of his own superficial nihilism. I'm not equating the Macy character's humanism with nihilism, just noting a similarity between the ironic structure of the two films).
Anyway, the Mamet film is a good one to spark excited discussion among students. I recommend it. August 29, 2006

Can You Say 'Nut Case' Boys and Girls?

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!

August 8, 2006

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