This movie is often billed as a 'one-woman show', a study of an extraordinary character, Miss Jean Brodie, played by an excellent actress. However, the movie is much more than that. It is a study of charisma and influence, of teachers and students, and presents a complex and fascinating coming-of-age story. This study takes place through the movie's double-focus on both Jean Brodie and her most precocious student, Sandy. Sandy is the strongest and most independent of Miss Brodie's students, and eventually she rebels and rejects her teaching completely. However, she is also truest to her teacher's expressed goals. Miss Brodie supposedly wants to teach 'her girls' to be like herself: powerful, independent individuals, free from the shackles of authority and group-think, beyond conventional sexual morality. In fact, she preys on the weakness and insecurity of her students, punishes independence and rewards slavish loyalty to her and to her personal plans and ideals. (The film's more subtle concern with fascism and authoritarianism echoes this theme: fascism elevates great individuals and praises their strength, just as it demands total obedience and slavishness from the rest.) Sandy, by recognizing and rejecting Miss Brodies's actions and plans, becomes her truest student: not only sexually adventurous, but bold, independent, and confrontational. The final scenes illustrate this beautifully. Miss Brodie has truly put "an old head" on Sandy's "young shoulders", and she truly is "hers for life"--though not in the way originally intended. In this way the movie presents a profound, sophisticated and realistic account of the way powerful individuals influence one another.
Reviews
2 Reviews
Saving Private Ryan
(1998)
Well-executed movie but the point is unclear
14 May 2005
Saving Private Ryan is well-filmed and well-acted. But it is thematically a mess, and on that count is wildly overrated.
The complaints about this movie on these IMDb comments are two: one that it is properly speaking an anti-war film, and the other that it indulges in crude nationalism. Both complaints are on the mark, but it should be noticed that they are not quite consistent with one another. Saving Private Ryan, in the tradition of Vietnam movies like Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, focuses on the human cost of war. But its moral, that we must earn the sacrifice those bold men made for us so long ago, sits rather uncomfortably with the focus on the cost. After all, how could we earn the loss of these men and the grief of their mothers? By living well? By being good people? It doesn't make sense. How could you make your life worth the sacrifice of so many others?
Perhaps the point is that we ought to be grateful to the men who fought and died for saving our lives. But this doesn't make sense either. The war in Europe did not properly speaking save our lives. Wars are rarely if ever fought to save lives. They are fought to conquer and to defend against being conquered. But being conquered does not amount to being killed, and it might well save lives to surrender. Spielberg does obliquely refer to the Holocaust in the film. But he must know as everyone does that the war was not fought to end the Holocaust.
Perhaps Spielberg is tacitly assuming some flag-waving boilerplate about how they fought 'for freedom', and we ought to be grateful for that. I don't deny that 'saving Europe for liberal democracy'however we understand that--was a noble cause. But it would be impossible to tell from this movie that this was the point of the war, and it might well be impossible to believe that such a cause was worth dying for once you had properly taken in its message: that war is the senseless destruction of mothers' sons.
War movies traditionally fall into two types. One type focuses on the heroic cause the soldiers fought for, in which case you will want to glorify war. You will want to make your soldiers look strong, noble, and make our hearts melt with admiration for them. Otherwise how can we encourage others to fight for such (often abstract) causes? Most classic WWII movies fit this mold. And given that most of us think WWII was fought for a good cause, this makes sense. The other alternative is to focus on the human cost of war, as Vietnam movies and WWI movies typically do. But it isn't a coincidence that Vietnam and WWI are thought to be pointless wars. The idea of such movies is that nationalism and social habits can lead us to sacrifice our children for nothing. By shocking us with the horror of war, we are encouraged to mistrust martial impulses.
Saving Private Ryan tries to take from both traditions, and ends up with a garbled mess. WWII was a noble cause that could not have been worth the sacrifice.
It might be argued that each type of movie neglects some important truth that the other type captures. Perhaps some great filmmaker will successfully ennoble the causes of war and at the same time capture its horror. Perhaps someone already has. All I know is that Spielberg has not.
The complaints about this movie on these IMDb comments are two: one that it is properly speaking an anti-war film, and the other that it indulges in crude nationalism. Both complaints are on the mark, but it should be noticed that they are not quite consistent with one another. Saving Private Ryan, in the tradition of Vietnam movies like Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, focuses on the human cost of war. But its moral, that we must earn the sacrifice those bold men made for us so long ago, sits rather uncomfortably with the focus on the cost. After all, how could we earn the loss of these men and the grief of their mothers? By living well? By being good people? It doesn't make sense. How could you make your life worth the sacrifice of so many others?
Perhaps the point is that we ought to be grateful to the men who fought and died for saving our lives. But this doesn't make sense either. The war in Europe did not properly speaking save our lives. Wars are rarely if ever fought to save lives. They are fought to conquer and to defend against being conquered. But being conquered does not amount to being killed, and it might well save lives to surrender. Spielberg does obliquely refer to the Holocaust in the film. But he must know as everyone does that the war was not fought to end the Holocaust.
Perhaps Spielberg is tacitly assuming some flag-waving boilerplate about how they fought 'for freedom', and we ought to be grateful for that. I don't deny that 'saving Europe for liberal democracy'however we understand that--was a noble cause. But it would be impossible to tell from this movie that this was the point of the war, and it might well be impossible to believe that such a cause was worth dying for once you had properly taken in its message: that war is the senseless destruction of mothers' sons.
War movies traditionally fall into two types. One type focuses on the heroic cause the soldiers fought for, in which case you will want to glorify war. You will want to make your soldiers look strong, noble, and make our hearts melt with admiration for them. Otherwise how can we encourage others to fight for such (often abstract) causes? Most classic WWII movies fit this mold. And given that most of us think WWII was fought for a good cause, this makes sense. The other alternative is to focus on the human cost of war, as Vietnam movies and WWI movies typically do. But it isn't a coincidence that Vietnam and WWI are thought to be pointless wars. The idea of such movies is that nationalism and social habits can lead us to sacrifice our children for nothing. By shocking us with the horror of war, we are encouraged to mistrust martial impulses.
Saving Private Ryan tries to take from both traditions, and ends up with a garbled mess. WWII was a noble cause that could not have been worth the sacrifice.
It might be argued that each type of movie neglects some important truth that the other type captures. Perhaps some great filmmaker will successfully ennoble the causes of war and at the same time capture its horror. Perhaps someone already has. All I know is that Spielberg has not.
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