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Reviews - An Education & The Horse Boy
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Based on Lynn Barber’s memoir, An Education is a sweeping piece of cinematic filmmaking, with its roots in smart directing (Lone Scherfig), stellar writing (novelist Nick Hornby) and damn fine acting by a cast that is deep and wonderful.
Star in the making Carey Mulligan is Jenny, a sixteen almost seventeen-year-old girl living in 1961 London. She is bright, in both the intelligent and bubbly sense, longs to get into Oxford and likes to throw in French phrases she has learned into daily conversation. With a pushy but loving father (the splendid Alfred Molina) and rather quiet mother (Cara Seymour), Jenny is a polite, slightly mischievous young woman who wants more. She finds it one day while walking in the rain with her cello as an older gentleman named David (Peter Sarsgaard) drives along beside her. Claiming to be a music lover, “concerned about your cello,” David flirts casually but meticulously with Jenny. He offers to drive her instrument home, letting her walk next to the car so as not to appear too pushy with his attraction.
David is everything Jenny wants. He lives a wealthy lifestyle, though not one rooted in stuffy offices. David hangs out at swanky clubs with his pals Danny (Dominic Cooper) and Helen (Rosamund Pike), travels casually to Paris and likes what other adults don’t like. He even charms Jenny’s parents in a wonderful scene where Molina views this newcomer with a look of judgment overcome by bemusement. However, things can only be so perfect. Time with David is hurting Jenny’s studies and her chance to go to college, plus his smooth-talking ways hide a sleazier tendency to take advantage of people, even if they might have it coming. In the talented creative hands behind An Education, nearly every laugh and struggle resonates.
Assuredly, none of this would be possible without Mulligan, an actress who has cut her teeth with excellent smaller roles in notable British adaptations like 2005’s Pride & Prejudice and that same year’s “Bleak House” mini-series. She is positively radiant and yes, like everyone points out, she resembles Audrey Hepburn in more than just the hairstyle. You feel that Mulligan has been Jenny her whole life, and whether joking around with her fellow teenagers or arguing with people who know far better than she does, she is engrossing and believable. This is a fabulous character brought to life.
Not that the surrounding ones are to be ignored. Hornby crafts them all with distinct but not broad personalities and Scherfig never oversells their presence. Each one is thoroughly layered, from Sarsgaard’s likeable but suspicious David to Molina’s overbearing dad, whose longing to have the best for his daughter has only caused a wedge to shoot up between them. Rosamund Pike gives accomplished, understated work as Helen, the member of this group of hipsters who remains a little less on the ball and bares her own melancholy. Plus, Emma Thompson gets to steal a scene or two as the strict headmistress. However, the one person who seems to be not getting enough praise is Olivia Williams, whose turn as Miss Stubbs, one of Jenny’s teachers, is delicate and well worth an award or two.
An Education only really has two issues. Firstly, though the coupling of Jenny and David is wholly believable, the actual age difference as it relates to edgier matters is handled with too light a touch. Equally, the ending, though sufficient, feels a tad limp, even rushed at times. Neither of these quibbles takes away too much from the overall enjoyment of the film but are two missteps which nevertheless linger.
An Education opens exclusively at Landmark’s Egyptian Theatre tomorrow.
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The documentary The Horse Boy sounds like a trite idea when you first here its description. Parents Rupert Isaacson and his wife Kristin Neff travel across the world to northern Mongolia in search of shamans, particularly a group that ride reindeers. The trip stems from their five-year-old son Rowan’s love of horses. With long, shaggy hair and a big smile, Rowan is autistic. He has no friends his own age and is prone to severe tantrums. However, when around his father’s horses, a sense of peace comes over Rowan. Having worked with mystical healers in the past, papa Rupert conceives the aforementioned trip to Asia, not quite in search of a cure, but hoping for possible improvements in “small things.”
Directed by Michel Orion Scott, with narration by Rupert through out, The Horse Boy could easily succumb to grand bouts of cloying speeches about the difficulties of parenthood, incessant heart pulling and shady editing to create a faux-cure and closure. Scott’s film never becomes that. What is presented is a tender story that is moving in little ways. Rupert and Kristin are not presented as saints. There are no asides from friends or family praising their courage or tenacity. Rupert describes having an “irrational shame” over his son’s condition early on and you sense the pain in his voice without feeling like the emotions are being jammed down your gullet.
The family’s Mongolian voyage is not shown as a breaking point or last hope. Rupert’s knowledge of the Bushmen of Africa lends him an optimistic but not ignorant view of spirituality. Kristin has more skepticism about the possibilities the trip offers but does not deny her son’s unique attachment with horses. They are not expecting Rowan to meet a shaman and then lose all of his symptoms; if their son learns to use the toilet or grows more comfortable with other kids that would be enough. What transpires is honestly moving in a way that is surprising and will leave many audiences shedding soft tears. The refusal to oversell what occurs, as well as Scott’s decision not to frame the happenings in a “this is the history of autism” box, allows The Horse Boy to slowly capture you.
The Horse Boy opens exclusively at Landmark’s Varsity Theatre tomorrow.
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