Oleanna

Rating:
Summary: Compelling But Unrealistic
Review: This is an interesting little stage play in which a distracted college professor, meeting with one of his students, is sucked right into a huge mess orchestrated by that student.

Given that the student's name is Carol, I did not understand the play's title "Oleanna." The dictionary advises, though, that an "oleander" is a poisonous evergreen shrub. This student was definitely poisonous, skillfully using the professor's own words against him and purposefully pushing him into doing further damage to himself.

From my own experience in the working world, I believe a similar real-life episode would never be allowed to fester as far as this one did. I think a real professor would have severed all contact with the student immediately after her actions following their first meeting, when she wrote up the conversation (recalled, astonishingly, word-for-word in great volume) and used it to document an official complaint against the poor chump. He kept attempting to deal with her, to negotiate, and constantly found himself saying the wrong thing and/or prompting the young woman's hostility and increasing her power over his life.

I bought this film because I heard the stage play sometimes provoked loud arguments in the audiences during the performances, and fist fights afterward in the theater lobbies -- and I can see how that would happen, especially among the college set and young professional adults.

David Mamet's dialogue is obviously David Mamet's dialogue. At times, I fully expected characters to break into, "Go to lunch, George. Will you go to lunch? Will you go to lunch?"

This is worth seeing once, for the mental challenge/enjoyment, but it's probably not the sort of intense drama you'll want to view repeatedly like Glengarry Glen Ross or Reservoir Dogs.

Rating:
Summary: title of review
Review: This is the most intelligent movie I've ever seen. This is far from the typical arty/intellectual movie approach of using vague abstraction to distance a film from any responsibilty for making a clear statement or even having a clear narrative. It's basically just a battle of wits between the two characters, but it's totally enthralling. Many times one character would make a statement, and the other would come back with a response that would leave me thinking "y'know I might not have looked at it that way, but what was said really makes a lot of sense".
I found the ending melodramatic and disappoining though. I had the impression that the two characters were both intelligent enough, and valued the truth enough, that they would have reached some reasonable conclusion. Maybe I misread the characters, but I never got the impression that either of them honestly had a distorted view of the truth or reality, they just chose to manipulate it at times.

Rating:
Summary: Communication a lack of..
Review: This movie is about a professor and his student who lack the most simplest form of communication. Both the professor and the student have problems with how they communicate to each other and there ways of handling situations. Because of that, a minor miscommunication problems gets blown out of proportion. This movie is centered around the power Professors have with their students and how they interact with them. It also focuses on the issues of male/female relationships and the difference between work and your family. This movie is well worth seeing. In some places the dialogue can be a little hard to follow, there is many interruptions during the movie that are intended to annoy you. But, overall I would definately recommend this movie if you want to see how people and society react first with out understanding.

Rating:
Summary: Communication a lack of..
Review: This movie is about a professor and his student who lack the most simplest form of communication. Both the professor and the student have problems with how they communicate to each other and there ways of handling situations. Because of that, a minor miscommunication problems gets blown out of proportion. This movie is centered around the power Professors have with their students and how they interact with them. It also focuses on the issues of male/female relationships and the difference between work and your family. This movie is well worth seeing. In some places the dialogue can be a little hard to follow, there is many interruptions during the movie that are intended to annoy you. But, overall I would definately recommend this movie if you want to see how people and society react first with out understanding.

Rating:
Summary: Against the flow
Review: This movie is based on a Mamet play: two characters in search of a common field of understanding. Understanding what? Who has the power. Here, a blandly 'radical', self-satisfied, pompous teacher meets an incompetent student who turns into a terrifying, puritanically 'correct' monster (or an icon of the battle against sexism?) None of the usual Hollywood emotional cliches, gasps, mumbled lines, bewildered looks, etc. Instead, two actors simply saying their lines in a very clear manner (the sound is incredibly crisp), not trying to impress with their craft, but using it simply in order to tell a story.

Rating:
Summary: Unnerving
Review: This movie will make you feel as though you've been arguing for days with your significant other over something so trivial that you end up tongue-tied and frustrated, unable to speak without exploding in a violent rage. It is a study in communication, or rather the lack thereof, and stars William H. Macy and another lady whose name I'm not familiar with. Macy's performance of the off-kilter writing style of David Mamet is impressive. It must be quite a chore to deliver with passion and cohesiveness lines of a screenplay that are so fragmented, as is evident by his co-star's (the lady) inability to do the same as convincingly. Macy's performance somehow seemed natural, while hers seemed forced. No slam to her though. I could only imagine trying to do as well as she did with that script.

I liked the movie. I liked the way I felt unnerved. I enjoy it when a movie can evoke emotion in me like this one did, even if those emotions were unpleasant to experience. Ultimately, that's the brilliant part of the whole thing. Mamet intends for you to feel this way. If you see this movie I give you this advise: be patient. Everything that occurs happens for reasons that become all too apparent once the crisis of the story arrives. Enjoy!