An Education

An Education has been on my "to see" list for quite a long time. However, it's a small British film so it only came to a theater (not so very) near me around Christmas. An Education is a film about growing up...while growing up. It's about a time when what we want for ourselves is not what everyone else has planned, about a time when in so many ways all we want is what feels nice. In An Education, Jenny, played to perfection by Carey Mulligan, experiences adolescence in a time when there were strict rules about conduct. Jenny is expected to go to Oxford by her father, her teachers, and even, at times, herself. In the midst of her pursuit of Oxford, where she dreams of a life when she can read English, study the books she wants, listen to French music, and fall in love with French movies, Jenny swept off course by a charming older man. Through the course of the film Jenny is forced to reconcile what is expected of her and what she, as a seventeen-year-old, wants for herself. An Education is the story of learning about mistakes and failure but most importantly how to get life back on track when the institutions designed to help are less than helpful. An Education is a rather traditional coming of age film, but its a very respectable one. The film is quiet and can be at times underwhelming, but Carey Mulligan is no small wonder and she makes the film marvelous. Mulligan has the ability to portray a wide range of emotions that makes Jenny, who could so easily have seemed annoyingly self-indulgent, seem fully fleshed out. Jenny seems so much like a real person who the audience is experiencing life with. Mulligan allows the audience to experience life as a girl who can pass as a women but is not quiet ready to do so, as a girl who wants so much to experience life and not just live it, as girl who is unusually intelligent but still swept away but the charming older man. All in all, the film is about a life the manages to learn lessons without being overly sentimental. This film is a quiet study of human nature that surpasses so many other common coming of age movies.