The story falls on the Sixties in Britain, a 16 year-old girl name’s Jenny studies in a famous school and her parents want her to study in Oxford University in the future. Thus, she studies very hard and also has some extracurricular activities in her spare time. It makes her has very good performances in school.
Until, there is a man, David appears in her life and then everything changes towards Jenny. David brings her to the upper class society, buys her expensive goods and also brings her to have a travel in Paris. All the above changes make Jenny feels that it’s useless to study hard if study just for the live for the future as David can provide her a stable live already.
Thus, Jenny quits the school and plans to get married with David later on until she found that David has already got married and even have a child. Jenny is very regret what she has done so far; she leaves the responsibilities to her parents and also blames them that why they have not stopped her to do those silly things. Jenny hates herself as she left everything behind but just for getting married with a married- man who has lied to her from the beginning. At last, she back to school and have a new start for her life.
According to the “Auteur Theory”, it has said that the director is most centrally responsible for a film’s form, style and meaning and also the person able to stamp his or her own ideas and thoughts in the film. During shooting the “An Education”, Lone Scherfig was practicing this theory. Due to this film’s background was set on the Sixties; she needs to pay attention to many details. She said that “I previously made a film which took place in Denmark in 1957 so I know something about the fear of excess, the shadow of the war and the very simple fantasy lives that people led then.” Apart from the story from Barber, Scherfig would like to show the social circumstances in England at that period to the audiences as well. Moreover, she also mentioned that “my job is to see that but also to see it from the audience’s point of view.” Apart from the shooting process, Scherfig would also laid stress on how the audiences feel when they are watching the film.
After watching this film, I think that it bring up a several questions to the young audiences. Actually, we study for satisfy our parents or study for ourselves? What should we really focus on in our lives? And is there a contradiction between education and life? To me, I think that you can also see those social phenomenons which mentioned in the film in Hong Kong now, for examples, the youngsters nowadays are addicted to buy the brand name products; they think that they are following their parents’ wishes to study hard and to have the tutorial class after school. Moreover, the media nowadays always exaggerate the issue of woman should get married with a rich man. The luxury products make people lose themselves so easily. Although the director would like to reflect the social phenomenon and problems in British at that period; it is not difficult to see those problems are rounding us in our daily lives too.
Student: NG YUEN YAN GOOFY (10321492)
The review is well organized into three main parts, namely the introduction of the film story, the “real story” of the director, and then the reflections of audience. In fact the first part is a bit lengthy, which can be reduced to one or two paragraphs. Regarding the point on “seeing from the audience’s point of view”, you may elaborate the idea in more details. For instance, how did the director achieve this goal? Is there any particular scene or storyline in the film that can illustrate this approach?
ReplyDeleteIt’s good to relate the film to youth culture and media representation in Hong Kong. However, I wonder if “getting married with a rich guy” still a formula adopted by the local media nowadays? I think this ideology has already faded out…