“An Education” is one of those movies that I can acknowledge is good, yet I didn’t particularly like it. This is because I’m starting to develop a low tolerance for watching supposedly new movies that I feel like I’ve seen many times before.
This is a classic coming-of-age story (in this case, set in early ’60s London, but it could be set anytime, anywhere) where a girl, Jenny (Carey Mulligan), falls for an older guy, David (Peter Sarsgaard), and realizes he isn’t quite the great guy he appears to be (with all his smoldering good looks and having nice manners and going to classical concerts and charming her folks). The hook — albeit a mild one — of “An Education” is the way you’ll shift your loyalties between characters. At various points in the movie, I related to David; Jenny’s dad (Alfred Molina); Jenny; and Jenny’s schoolteacher (Olivia Williams from “Dollhouse”).
The message is an old, tired one (“If something sounds too good to be true, it is”), and it depends on David ultimately being an ass. In a better story, there’d be more subtlety there (I think screenwriter Nick Hornby is a brilliant novelist, and some of his wittiness sneaks in, but I feel like he’s a bit of a hired gun on this project).
I’m glad, though, that rather than leaving Jenny’s dad and teacher as those pathetic types who are so prim and proper that they never enjoy life, they are redeemed in the end when Jenny has to lean on them.
I liked Jenny well enough, but I don’t quite understand all the Carey Mulligan hype. There has been a lot of talk about how the actress, now 24, was able to pull off playing a 16-year-old, but she actually seemed 20-something to me. That’s not always a problem (after all, I’m a fan of “Beverly Hills 90210” and “Dawson’s Creek,” both notorious for casting older than characters’ ages), but it is a problem here, because we’re supposed to be alarmed by the age difference. Really though, don’t women regularly go for older men (and men for younger women, naturally)? The way Jenny brushes off Graham — who is merely a boy, not an exciting man like David — is not so much disappointing as it is simply the way of the world.
Perhaps “An Education” should have cast an actual 16-year-old to play across from Sarsgaard. It might have leant a little more intrigue to a movie that — while well acted and well paced and all that — is ultimately as forgettable as the names of your ninth-grade teachers.
Anyone care to defend the merits of “An Education?” If so, comment away.