An Education

AN EDUCATION

Up For:
Best Motion Picture of the Year
Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published

The film An Education was unlike any film I saw it being. The trailers for An Education made the film look scandalous. The result was quite the opposite. Carey Mulligan plays a young woman in high school is ahead of her time. The young boys that want to date her are very immature (but allow for some funny parts, especially when one comes to dinner with Carey's father, played by Alfred Molina). Eventually, Mulligan's character meets a much older man with a love for music that wants to show her the world and the art that occupies it.

Instead of the normal film where everyone finds this inappropriate (a feeling you get more often than any of the characters), it lives to its name "An Education" in which the only people that find it unacceptable are the school heads, Mulligan's teacher as well as her headmistress played by Emma Thompson. Sure that she is learning more with her new older man, played by Peter Sarsgaard, she follows his love blindly.

Carey Mulligan is fantastic in this part, not showing her true age (which is 24) through the naivety yet brilliance of her young character. Any other year, Mulligan would undoubtedly take home the gold but with so many great performances this year, she may just be overshadowed by bigger names and stronger performances, especially when she faces other new comer Gabourey Sidibe from Precious.

Not sure An Education was strong enough to take home either Best Picture or Best Adapted Screenplay. I look at the nomination lists and the film simply does not jump out at me as a huge winner.

The music to this film was surprisingly upbeat and enjoyable. The opening credits song hooked me immediately, along with the fun graphics that accompanied it. As the mood changes through the film, the music corresponds effectively.

An Education, as a whole, was a solid film, strong all the way through, however, that can be said for more than half the nominees this year, leaving An Education to not live up to high expectations.

(11 FILMS TO GO)