Comments on: Professors as the Opposite of Heroes

By: Kate Pitrone

Kate Pitrone — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 00:48:14 +0000

But in that the professor is heroic, not the opposite of a hero.

By: Paul Barnes

Paul Barnes — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 23:32:17 +0000

I am a little surprised no one has mentioned SHADOWLANDS – starring Sir Anthony Hopkins as CS Lewis.

I cannot explain how good this movie is either. It has to be experienced.

By: Peter Lawler

Peter Lawler — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 12:20:30 +0000

Good point on admired versus to be emulated

By: Art Deco

Art Deco — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 12:11:09 +0000

And yet, for me, this is the essential: this film debunks intellectual vanity and the vanity of philandering, and dares suggest that some One True Thing might lie closer to the loving loyalty of a (house)wife and mother. That’s no mean affirmation in our world, and so I’m for that movie.

1. I doubt Quindlen actually believes that affirmation as stated. The story is about a professional woman coming to appreciate her mother because her mother has put up with the big He (and has some skills her daughter had taken for granted). The fictional Katherine Gulden is someone to be admired, not emulated. “Ellen Gulden” is in a ‘relationship’. How is that man portrayed? Is there anything about the association between men and women as portrayed in the film that would lead a professional woman to the conclusion that such associations are worth it?

2. That affirmation is corrupted by all kinds of other crap.

By: Peter Lawler

Peter Lawler — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 10:59:33 +0000

BACK TO SCHOOL really is an erotic appreciation of liberal education and a fine display of the absurdity of going to college to learn something about business from professors “who never met a payroll” or paid off the mob. It also reminds us how shameless colleges are when a rich guy comes to town. It’s better than several other movies mentioned here. Thanks to Ralph for affirming the core message of ONE TRUE THIING, which shines through despite the idiocy of the novel’s author.

By: Tim Anderson

Tim Anderson — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 01:56:53 +0000

This is too serious. How about Back to School with Rodney Dangerfield falling in love with his English professor who teaches him to enjoy things he never knew existed and embarrassing his business professor who knows nothing about business. Real Genius is another fun movie (albeit terrible) in which the professor sells out to the military to create weapons and uses his students to do it.

By: Ralph

Ralph — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 01:44:31 +0000

I’m coming late to this conversation, as usual. I appreciate many insights on the vanity and insularity of the professoriate. At bottom this vanity and insularity stem from the very posture of scientism, in which the scholar adopts a position beyond the merely human concerns of citizens, lovers, etc. Pierre Manent: the pagan philosophers claimed to be a superior human being; the social scientist is superior to our very humanity. I can see at work the attractions of this hyper-uranian appeal to students in political science who are flattered to leave behind the messy disagreements between liberals and conservative and fly to the sterile planet of quantitative methodology, from whence they can observe such debates with lofty indulgence.
Meanwhile, please indulge my maudlin sentiment in favor of One True Thing. I have never read Quindlen, and I grant your points about defects in the movie. And yet, for me, this is the essential: this film debunks intellectual vanity and the vanity of philandering, and dares suggest that some One True Thing might lie closer to the loving loyalty of a (house)wife and mother. That’s no mean affirmation in our world, and so I’m for that movie.

By: Pseudoplotinus

Pseudoplotinus — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 01:29:23 +0000

Saw Damsels with my wife, who will never forgive me for the experience I put her through.

My impression is that Stillman was lacking the cast and setting for what he wanted to accomplish. In his previous installments he built stories around young boomers whose pre-boomer sensibilities were misplaced in the cultural changes occuring about them. The charm of his films consisted in watching these hyper-articulate well meaning characters attempt to come to grips with the resulting disorientation.

In damsels, the story was set in the present where there are no more college age kids who hearken back to the days of debutant balls in manhattan and so Stillman concocts a small coterie of eccentric girls who sound suspiciously similar to the upper haute bourgeoisie of his previous films but with none of the generational back story or context. Instead we learn that the eccentric leader is basically crazy, though in a benevolent sort of way, and her followers are never developed sufficiently to explain their fellowship with her.

My impression was the group lacked the coherent identity that defined the UHB’s of Stillman’s previous movies and as a result the cultural disorientation that was put to such good use was lacking making the girls motives and mission seem eccentric at best, arbitrary at worste.

Most of all I found myself missing the original core group of actors who were in the first three films. This cast seemed to be far less well suited for the wordy, rapid fire sort of dialogue that Stillman relies on in his stories.

Having said that, I certainly hope Stillman gives it another try, perhaps moving on to a different theme altogether.

By: Peter Lawler

Peter Lawler — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 22:26:15 +0000

DAMSELS, in the words of one astute critic, is the most pretentious script ever written. Not that there’s anything wrong with that if you’re READING it.

By: Carl Eric Scott

Carl Eric Scott — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 21:31:58 +0000

DAMSELS is uber-Stillman, Stillman on steroids. There is something initially appalling and unlikable about that…definitely not as accessible as the other films. It is out on video now, so I propose that folks here try to see it in the next two weeks, and then we’ll talk it up good…and it certainly is solid fodder for good talk. Come November 8 or so, we’ll probably need something more to talk about than why Obama lost and what the Romney admin will be like, and God forbid, why democracy stinks and Americans were deluded and deceived enough to re-elect the O.