source: Oleanna

Trailer—Oleanna

Oleanna

Student Carol (Debra Eisenstadt) visits Professor John (William H. Macy) to discuss how she failed his course but the discussion takes an awkward turn. Roger Ebert, who loved the play, was "astonished" to report that Oleanna was not a very good film, characterizing it as awkward and lacking in "fire and passion". He does think the play 9and to some extent the film) makes clear how men and women can see things two different ways. He freely admits he sides with the male point of view while others have argued that the student was in the right. Overall, I did not really care for the movie. I like Mamet and I love his dense writing, but it seemed to fall flat here. Macy is alright, but the student is annoying. She comes across as either stupid or in some way stunted. The repetition is annoying, too, as how many times must she ask about his house?

Mamet seems to be taking on political correctness, which is at its worst in academia. The professor finds himself in a Kafkaesque fix when trying to help a naive female student. She is later used as a tool by a radical feminist group, to attack the professor, the administration, and patriarchal society, blah, blah, blah. I have heard that the stage production was very good, but the movie sucks. The characters are intensely irritating. I realize that this was deliberate, but it was overdone to the point of ruining the show.

The dialogue is difficult to get past -- you want to grab the characters one at a time by the throat so the other one can at least finish a sentence or thought without interruption. But if you stick with it, the characters do deliver on what had to be a difficult script. And I found the irony of the story line to be the reward. It is a mind game -- not for the casual viewer.

I found the film truly excellent and it went way beyond my expectations. It's about a he and a she. Nothing is what it seems initially, and everyone is somehow right. What is fascinating is the way you change sides, and how everyone is convincing. This is a movie of debate and meaning. And truly fascinating debate(whatever you might think initially, it's no boring movie for literature addicts!). Also I thought the final scene was amazing as I could identify myself with the feelings of the professor, but at the very end there were no good guys. WATCH IT!

Once I got past some early dialogue that was annoying, to say the least, this film proved itself to be quite powerful. Simply put, if this movie doesn't provoke some kind of emotion from you, then you clearly weren't paying attention. I have to confess that I had little sympathy for one of the characters, and that is probably why I found the ending to be so infuriating. But it is rare for a film to get me so worked up, and so I have to heartily recommend this movie, even though the finale left me angry. If only all films could get me as emotional as this one did...

This film is basically about a student who cannot accept she's failing class and decides to ruin her teacher's life by framing him. Around this basis, a quite witty dialogue is unfolded, which makes the movie intellectually stimulating and powerful. Additionally, it depicts the invalidity of some axioms of both professor and student community and portraits how people manipulate the truth to serve their personal interests. A very strong point is how pompous and cliche arguments about void pseudo-liberties alienate people from truly disastrous and desperate situations. As I see from other reviews, the play was much better, but unfortunately we didn't have the chance to see it here in Greece yet, so my first impression of Mamet's work was from this movie.