_Oleanna_

                   reviewed by Cynthia Fuchs

      
     David Mamet's screen version of his controversial play is,
expectedly, very stagey. The language is anxious, artificial, and
aggressive; the scenes are for the most part confined to one increasingly
claustrophobic room, the office of a university professor (William H.
Macy). In Act 1, he's approached by a timid student, Carol (Debra
Eisenstadt), who is worried about her failing grade. As he attempts to
"help'' her, it's clear that he's distracted (he's up for tenure, he's
buying a house, his wife keeps calling on the phone). It's also clear that
he's self- absorbed and insensitive, even as he thinks he's being
innovative in his attempts to "break down'' the arbitrary conventions of
student-teacher relations. 

	In Act 2, Carol returns to discuss a complaint she's filed with
his tenure committee, concerning his sexism, racism, and abuses of
"paternal prerogative.'' By now, he's on the defensive, and both
characters' emotions escalate to some incredible, and physicalized,
proportions. While this all seems designed to investigate and exaggerate
existing authority structures and conformities (he to a reductive male
privilege, she to a simplistic "feminist'' PC-ness), it also makes some
annoying assumptions in order to get to its characters' extreme reactions. 
   
  Surely, Mamet is an energetic, politically aware artist (His film,
_Homicide_, is a remarkable study of cop-movie conventions, racism,
and anti-Semitism). The questions he raises here may have been important
ones, having to do with situational misreadings, the inevitable inadequacy
of language, and the vagaries of personal politics. All these are
trivialized by the hysteria of the concluding scenes. This is a lazy
script, in the sense that potential complications are made inflammatory
rather than provocative, and responsibility (on the part of either
character) is made inconsequential rather than political or structural. 


     A sidenote that's also at the center of the film's promotion is this:
Samuel Goldwyn has sent out copies of an "Educator's Handbook for
Classroom Discussion'' to university departments. What's interesting about
this is its listing of actual court cases, to serve as background for
discussions of the film that teachers are (apparently) supposed to assign
their students to pay to see. Hmmm. The movie takes considerable dramatic
license, in its hyperbolic extension of the "real'' cases, in order, the
Goldwyn Company seems to suggest, to generate conversation and debate. And
the "study questions'' are awful, asking students to pass judgments on
underdeveloped characters, imagine life histories and pop-psychological
profiles for them ("Does Carol's rage against John mask an underlying
resentment over his life of privilege and intellectual prowess?'' You
decide). This sounds a bit like the insta-analysis on Court TV, or Maury
Povich and Jerry Springer's quick-fix talk shows. Tidy, but hysterical
nonetheless. 



Cynthia Fuchs teaches film and media studies at George Mason University.

Copyright by Cynthia Fuchs.  All rights reserved.
Please do not reprint this review without the permission of the author.

This review originally appeared in the Philadelphia _City Paper_.