Oleanna

Starring:William H. Macy, Debra Eisenstadt, Diego Pineda, Scott Zigler
Director: David Mamet
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

David Mamet's hot-button stage work comes to the screen, with Mamet at the directing helm and all of the play's provocations intact. It's a sinister two-hander, with William H. Macy as a smug college professor and Debra Eisenstadt as a desperate student who's struggling in his class. When the story moves to its second act, the twin specters of sexual harassment and political correctness are raised, forcing us to reassess the argument we've been watching. Brilliantly tooled as a stage workout, Oleanna loses something in its transfer to the screen, although it is always bracing to see Macy create one of his meticulous portraits of a less-than-heroic man. Mamet's ear for the absurdities of late-twentieth-century jargon (especially of the politicized variety) is mercilessly accurate, and in this ticked-off look at the intricacies of a power play, he gives you an earful. --Robert Horton

Description

From OscarÂ(r)-nominated* writer-director David Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross) comes this chillingly provocative, incisive drama that dissects the controversial issue of sexual harassmentfrom every emotionally wrenching side of the equation. When a college professor about to be tenured (William H. Macy, Fargo) meets a struggling student (Debra Eisenstadt) behind closed doors,their conversation yields only mutual misunderstanding and a charge of sexual harassment. And as their mutual antipathy turns ugly, it destroys lives, derails careers and ultimately leads to a cataclysmic event that no one ever expected! *1997: Adapted Screenplay, Wag the Dog (with Hilary Henkin); 1982: Adapted Screenplay, The Verdict

Customer Reviews:

Well done........2007-05-31

It is not an easy thing to attack a trendy kind of facism which makes young people feel important. Even written descriptions of this film stop short of saying whether there is sexual harrassment or not. Brilliantly done.

Great story, terrible acting.......2007-05-13

Saw this on the stage and was blown away. However, in this movie version, the acting is just mechanical, wooden and unconvincing. It really spoils such a solid play. Half the time, I feel like I am watching a continuation of GlenGarry GlenRoss.

Interesting Drama.......2006-08-29

This DVD version of the Mamet play has been reviewed by quite a few people in this forum. I just want to add one observation that moves away from the common perception that the play is simply about a mentally disturbed woman who employs feminist politics to presecute a college professor. That's true as far as it goes, but the play also seems to be about a college professor who digs his own grave by undermining the student's faith in the educational process and the institution that provides it. The student comes to the professor with a burning desire to learn, yet a marked inability to understand the terms in which knowledge is transmitted. The professor takes this as a legitimate criticism of traditional education, and an occasion to advance a highly idealistic view of education as the questioning of authority. Unfortunately, this is not what the student is looking for. She wants certainty, security, positive meaning, and the power that, in her mind, the possession of such knowledge confers upon the professor. She wants exactly that which the professor proceeds to denigrate. He overestimates her, which is to say that he utterly fails to understand her in her youthful confusion, yearning, and anxiety. Adrift, she finds the unambiguous truth she desires through her feminist "group", and uses this "knowledge" to turn the tables, to seize for herself the power she perceives the professor as having held over her. In so doing, of course, she destroys not only the professor, but any form of education that you or I would recognize as having value. This, then, might be seen as a comment on the politicization of the curriculum that began in higher education in the 1980s, of an advanced humanism sowing the seeds of its own destruction. The play seems to suggest that society at large cannot accommodate the insights of the humanist intellectuals, but survives on a simpler faith. Our professor destroyed that faith insofar as the student sought it in higher education, so she found it elsewhere. In a sense, his loss of nerve opens the floodgates. I think of Hitchcock's movie, "Rope", also about a professor the effect of whose words on a pair of students provides the "rope" with which he "hangs" himself, in a manner of speaking (the professor in that movie isn't the victim, but he is brought face-to-face with the consequences of his own superficial nihilism. I'm not equating the Macy character's humanism with nihilism, just noting a similarity between the ironic structure of the two films).
Anyway, the Mamet film is a good one to spark excited discussion among students. I recommend it.

Can You Say 'Nut Case' Boys and Girls?.......2006-08-08

Funny, only one other reviewer here noticed, or had the guts, to state the obvious: the girl in this movie is OBVIOUSLY delusional and in need of psychotherapy. But I digress...

Alright, here's the truth about this movie. The always-great Macy plays a middle-aged college professor who offers help to one of his failing students, in this case a young woman with CLEAR psychological problems. The student in question blows a simple misunderstanding into a full blown sexual harassment charge aimed at destroying the professor, which in turn would mean losing his hard-earned tenure. Any NORMAL woman would CLEARLY have seen the misunderstanding for what it was: A MISUNDERSTANDING, and consequently drop the matter entirely. Not so the student-from-hell in this film. She not only misconstrues the professors intentions, she goes on a personal vendetta with the single-minded purpose of a shark hunting a baby seal (only the shark is more intelligent), whereas the girl comes accross as a moron with schizo-affective disorder. She tries to completely and utterly destroy the man.

Just when you think it couldn't possibly get any better, things go from bad to worse. What happens next could only take place in the mind of someone in desperate need of thorazine: She accuses the professor of RAPING her.

Can you say 'nut case' boys and girls?

I enjoyed this movie only because of Macy, who in my opinion is one of the most underrated actors of our times. However the movie is a bit unrealistic in that most men would have either walked away from this girl completely, told one of their peers about it soon enough to make others aware of the situation, OR - and this is what most men would have done if it came to the same point as it did in the movie. Hire a lawyer!

He didn't go far enough.......2006-07-19

Oleanna is about a twisted, vicious young woman's need to bring a man (and by extention, all men) down. John, played by William Macy, is a college professor. Carol, played by Debra Eisenstadt, is one of his students. When Carol seeks help for a failing grade, John goes out of his way to help her personally, on a one to one basis. Carol is more than a little irritating and John becomes more than a little irritated by her seeming inability to grasp the simplist concepts. Playing the good professor, John faults his pedantic self for her failure to understand the material. Days later, John is caught off guard when Carol maliciously levels the charge of sexual harrasment against him - just in time to destroy his bid for tenure. Her earlier need for help has been a set up. Carol has been keeping notes all along - cataloging any word or action she might turn against him. Carol's campaign against John is facilitated by what she refers to as "the group." That is to say, by the usual nest of ideological feminists on campus in which Carol has "found herself" and a place for her sexual neuroses. She comes fully armed with her feminist groupthink about sexual harrassment and rape. Her arguments against John rest on rejecting the evidence of one's own senses in favor of a left wing vocabulary thick with words like "patriarchal," "hegemonic," "classism," and an obvious hatred of men. The director, David Mamet, tests the audiences patience as Carol apes the usual post-modern jardon that would put into question our everyday intersubjective (common sense) consensus about the meaning of our everyday words and actions -- especially the everyday words and actions of men. For Carol and "the group,'" reality is always trapped between parentheses because it is always determined by power and those who have it. Men had it in the past. She and her group have it now. Her "reality" takes precedence over John's. Carol eventually trumps her charge of sexual harrassment with a charge of rape and John, bless his heart, loses his inhibitions about hitting a woman. All in all, this movie held my attention, made me needlessly anxious, and pissed me off just enough to want to write my take on it.

Average customer rating:

Charlie Rose

ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

( C ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

Description

First, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and director David Mamet discusses his influences, his writing, and his latest film, Oleanna, an adaptation of his stage play. Then, jazz great Dave Brubeck and composer Ezra Laderman discuss music and their project, The Composer's Composer.

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