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An Education is a class not to be missed
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An Education presents such a rarefied image of 1960s post-war London that it may well have been unearthed from a time capsule. The language, the characters and dialogue and social mores too. The streets are all formed so perfectly as they once were, and without even one iota of vile CGI to create or muddy what we see before us.
And it is lucky then that said characters who inhabit said world do so perfectly, with a rhyme and reason befitting their time and place. To say that Carey Mulligan is a revelation is both underselling her performance and almost an insult to tie her work to such a now tired cliché. For all its par excellence in direction, screenplay and art direction, the film is nothing without her; she inhabits each and every frame as though it were her last.
Sarsgaard, coming off the beyond dire Orphan, is wonderfully back on form as the older man who seduces Mulligan. It’s by no means a showy role, and it’s all the better for it. Sarsgaard is an incredibility talented actor who can do plenty with little, and here he isn’t given a lot on the page, and he is forced to show us everything that is not.
For my money, this is Hornby’s best writing to-date. His pen has crafted an autobiographical essay into cinema as art. The film doesn’t beg for an Oscar the way so many do during awards season, and because of that I hope it is not lost in the noise of the endless ‘For Your Consideration’ ad-banners.
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