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96 reviews in total

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29 out of 33 people found the following review useful:
One of the scariest movies I've seen...., 22 January 2004
Author: dcphillips33

David Mamet's "Oleanna" is a harrowing, horrifying, gut-wrenching portrayal of two human beings who have entered into - as John, the professor played by William H. Macy declares - an agreement as to certain forms and institutions - and the institution of grading is, though the catalyst for what follows, the least of concerns here.... "Oleanna" is set squarely in the midst of contemporary academia, but the issues it addresses are more far-reaching than those pertaining solely to classrooms and the offices of intellectuals. That said, many may have difficulty relating to the characters and to the specifics of the situation in which they find themselves - the drama is more often than not a drama of words, ideas - "discourses." But these are, ultimately, only the incidentals - or better, the particular manifestations - of what is at root as "simple" as a basic communication breakdown: "I don't understand" is a phrase uttered countless times by both of the protagonists/antagonists. And ultimately, this is what "Oleanna" is really "about": the difficulty - the impossibility?, as it is suggested - for two people to understand each other on the most fundamental level.... The "plot," such as it is, is rather simple: a private meeting between professor and student yields two wildly divergent ideas of what actually took place, and why. Carol, an intense and troubled young student, is concerned with her apparently miserable grade in a course taught by John, and goes to meet him in his office to discuss it. Initially, the audience's sympathies are squarely with Carol - especially in light of the brusque, brutal, even cruel manner with which John initially dismisses her. But slowly, John softens - he begins to see himself in the young girl, and soon he allows his guard to slip - he "dissolves the boundaries between teacher and student" and undertakes to help Carol as a fellow, sympathetic human being.... The equilibrium - if in fact there ever is any at all - is not, however, to last for long; the encounter results in a savage power-struggle in which each participant fails to connect with the other and, ultimately self-absorbed, fails to understand the other's position and motives. "Oleanna" is really about the consequences, it seems, of abstraction - and Mamet and his actors do a wonderful job of demonstrating the disjunction between the real, human core of individuals and the superficial personae that are variously self-adopted and assigned by the other. There are several moments where entente seems on the very verge of realization, in which "feelings" emerge to bridge the gaps separating the middle-aged, middle-class, white male teacher and the young, lower-class, white female student - but the moments are always interrupted by one or the other of the two participants, through, basically, self-absorbed self-indulgence of immediate concerns - be they material or psychological. And each immediately falls back into the traditional, comfortable role s/he has been playing. This film troubled me a great deal - both at the time I watched it, and later. There are, in fact, no easy answers, and the tagline "whichever side you choose, you're wrong" has come to seem to me much truer than I at first thought. The film really is a Foucault-informed meditation on power and discourse - both consciously exercised and unconsciously-assumed. But ultimately, I think, the film indicates that no solutions can be discovered in the very foundation of the problem - the modern tendency to abstract identity from socio-political and intellectual discourses. John seems much closer to the truth than Carol - but he is no less wrong for it - for he fails to "practice what he preaches," whether or not he knows it. These issues are "universal" in today's post-modern Western world - but perhaps nowhere are they better exemplified, or more serious, than in academia, where words are the foundation of life itself. As a chosen academic myself, and as both student and teacher, I found this film woefully plausible (in many respects - the fact that even a second, let alone a third and fourth meeting ever took place is admittedly rather incredulous) and relevant; quite frankly, it terrified me. I can honestly say - even considering my guilty addiction to cheap horror flicks - that "Oleanna" is the scariest movie I have seen in years....

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18 out of 22 people found the following review useful:
Prepare yourself for discussions and dissensions., 22 January 2000

Author: niteman from The Outer Planets

This is a movie not without faults -- the dialog at the beginning is stilted, William H. Macy's performance is not without its weak spots -- but in spite of those quibbles, is a compelling, intriguing film.

The movie centers on the relationship between a student and a professor at an unnamed university. She goes to him for extra help in his class (but she may be just trying to set him up for a sexual harrassment lawsuit). He tries to help her with her studies (but may be trying to dominate and have innappropriate relations with her at the same time). As the relationship turns into a struggle, the viewer finds him/herself switching sides early and often. The tension in the film becomes the viewer's tension; during the final scenes you'll barely breathe.

The tagline is right -- whatever side you choose, you're wrong. I've seen this movie lambasted as being anti-feminist, lauded for being pro-feminist, hated for being anti-establishment, pro-establishment, racist, sexist, etc. In reality, it is all and none of these things. Oleanna is a mirror that forces us to examine and discuss our own convictions. That it accomplishes this while still being an exciting film makes it worth seeing more than once.

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15 out of 18 people found the following review useful:
Two characters, one room - I wasn't bored for a second!, 15 July 2004
Author: Ben_Cheshire from Oz

Unique, hyper-real film where the dialogue is the main plot - and what a rivetting plot it is. I was very skeptical about Oleanna, and was really resistant to it - but was very surprised to find myself succumbing to it. If you love language, and know enough language, Oleanna will be a joy for you: because the dialogue is loaded with jokes about dialogue. You'll be able to pick the places where Bill Macy is saying non-words, pretentious words or jargons in his monologues - and notice where somebody is talking ambiguously, or not saying anything at all.

Its about words, talking and meaning. So there are lots of words for good reason.

Its very dialoguey dialogue: not the kind of things people say, but the kind of things writers write. Reminiscent of the verbal gymnastics of Samuel Beckett, and the twisting meanings of Catch-22. Or perhaps the comedic pretentiousness of Hal Hartley. Meaning is controlled by the powerful - that's the key. Whoever controls the conversation, the language, in this movie - controls the situation. So everything is either ambiguous or figurative. Mainly, the exact things the two say are not what's key. Its which one of them is talking.

The performances - well, Macy at least - are in an appropriately hyper-real tone to suit the hyper-real dialogue. The girl is not very good, but this is still a masterpiece of language. Its static, centring on two characters and one room, but for good reason - to put the words centre stage. I'm so shocked that i just watched a movie with two characters and one room, and was not only not bored once, but hanging on each word and found that the time flew by.

The moral of the story is that things are bound to go wrong if you talk to somebody for the length of an entire movie. You're bound to go nuts. The viewer is bound to go nuts just listening to William H Macy in the first half-hour of the movie - you'll be amazed that purely talking to someone, using words, can make you feel that you're trapped, that you can't win or even escape.

Quite brilliant, really.

8/10. Essential viewing. I never knew dialogue held this power. A unique discovery.

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11 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
A Good But Neglected Message, 26 July 2005

Author: aimless-46 from Kentucky

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Oleanna gets my solid recommendation, at least for people who like small movies with really intense acting performances. Adapted pretty much straightforward from the play it benefits from the intimacy of television, as it gets no benefit from being on a big screen. It is not really a feminist film as neither character is portrayed in a particularly flattering manner.

Oleanna is basically a two-character film, which is divided into three sections, corresponding to three visits by a young college woman to her professor's faculty office. It is a small elite college and coming from a modest background she has had to make a lot of sacrifices to attend the school. As we come to know her we see that she harbors an "extreme" amount of resentment concerning these sacrifices.

The Professor (William Macy who played the role on the stage) is pompous, arrogant, and overbearing. He pontificates excessively and having him as your instructor would not be an inspirational experience. His approach to teaching and the film's title (a reference to a couple who sold swampland to unsuspecting saps) is a slap at the rip-off that passes for higher education.

Carol (Debra Eisenstadt) is flunking his class, her work is inadequate but she feels entitled to special treatment because of her disadvantaged social situation and her many sacrifices to attend the school. It is on this point that the play/film is especially interesting because part of her situation has merit, she simply wants him to teach her-to respect her and her aspirations for an education (i.e. to actually be a teacher). And someone from her background should receive help with the technical terms and theoretical abstractions, which are already familiar to those who received better preparation in high school. Toward the end of her first visit the professor for unknown reasons switches from stern taskmaster into his paternal mode and seems to realize that he really should be doing his job better.

But Carol misinterprets his sudden interest and on her second visit informs him that she and a support "group" are going pursue a sexual harassment complaint with his tenure committee. Her allegations, when viewed out of context appear to have merit and upset him enough that he physically blocks her exit. This simply compounds his trouble.

Her third visit occurs after he has been denied tenure and is packing up to leave the school. While clear that the professor has never had any sexual interest in her and was not trying to trade sexual favors for a grade, Carol's interpretation of his actions seems reasonable and sincere until she attempts to blackmail him and then condescendingly admonishes him about the pet name he uses for his wife. At that point you realize that she is a nut case who has irresponsibly ruined his life, in part because of her resentment about her overall situation at the college and in part because of desire for power.

This makes for a intriguing twist as Carol is revealed as one of those well meaning people so caught up in the rightness of their cause (and the seductive power of suddenly having influence) that they become blind to the human consequences of their actions.

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11 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
Quirky, full of irony, not a film for everyone, 29 November 1999

Author: Loren Harrison (harrison-20) from Charlotte, North Carolina

The dialogue is difficult to get past -- you want to grab the characters one at a time by the throat so the other one can at least finish a sentence or thought without interruption. But if you stick with it, the characters do deliver on what had to be a difficult script. And I found the irony of the story line to be the reward. It is a mind game -- not for the casual viewer.

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15 out of 22 people found the following review useful:
Wonderful! Just try to watch with an Open Mind!, 7 August 2001

Author: Neal Fischer from San Jose, California

This movie is one of my Favorites and Very Underrated.

I love movies that challenge my beliefs and shake me up, get me thinking, show me false hoods of my thinking. Mament' Oleana met this criteria and then some.

At least 3 times while watching this I wanted to turn it off! I felt disturbed, insulted and manipulated! I stuck with it and the voluminous 1:1 dialogue between John (the professor) and Carol (the student).

I watched with my wife and we had diametrically different opinions about the issue of sexual assault. This discussion with my wife was very enlightening for me; I could not believe what was coming out of her mouth. My wife was so vehemently committed to her position (that Carol was a victim of sexual assault) I started to laugh! (Tip for the fellows: never laugh at your wife in these moments!)

After another 2 hours of discussion I moved my opinion to the `middle ground'. All in all this was the most thought provoking and `shake up my atrophied beliefs' movie ever.

Highly recommended when you watch that you do so with someone else of the opposite sex! Very intriguing discussion afterwards!

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9 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
A New Approach to Oleanna, 30 August 2004
Author: michael-deakin from Melbourne, Australia

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Almost all of the discussion of Mamet's play 'Oleanna' seems to fall short of the main point. As a film it took time to enter, but it had all the virtues that its admirers see in it, and it demands attention on many levels: simple story, 'He said, She said', analysis of language, etc.

However, the play is called 'Oleanna' and apparently this derives from an obscure swindle in which a man, Ole, and a woman, Anna, conspire to sell swampland to gullible purchasers, who imagine it to be arable. The appearance of this reference in the title (and nowhere else in the play) is surely significant. It provides the key to a full understanding of what is going on.

As there are only two characters on stage in the play, they (John & Carol) must be Ole & Anna. There is no other possibility. So John and Carol are combining ('conspiring' is hardly the word here) to swindle someone into accepting swampland when they expect farmland. Or to change the metaphor, they are issuing false coin.

So who is being deluded?

Here again, there are many possible answers. The image of the intellectual endeavor is a clear possibility. It has become so debased that 'I don't understand' has become a tool of rhetoric instead of an instrument of genuine enquiry. Or it could be our notion of interpersonal dialogue, in which it has become normative to assume the impossibility of common ground when premises differ. Or John & Carol may be acting out roles in the setting of an institution that has itself become a vehicle for deceit: mere mouthpieces for the conflicting values of students and faculty. Or yet again, the post-modernist concept of a valueless analysis might be taken to be the swindle on a gullible public. Etc.

But perhaps we can go even further. What if the title refers to the play itself? (After all, it might be said that titles usually do!) To put this view most forcibly, do something that many of the audience actually do: ask what happens next. John's career is ruined; indeed his whole life is. And what of Carol? Will she profit from her actions?

Well actually neither of these. Once the credits start to roll, John and Carol cease to exist. Nothing further happens to either of them. They vanish as completely as did Ole & Anna, and we are left to contemplate the swampland we have just bought.

Mike D

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9 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Political correctness gone mad, 17 May 2004
Author: ubercommando from London

The overwhelming impression that I got from watching this film is how language can be manipulated and used as a weapon to crush someone else. At the beginning, we see Macy's professor in a bad light (he seems to be playing the weak and morally compromised character that he does so well), but as the film goes on, I thought he was increasingly becoming the victim, not the oppressor. Carol uses language and wields political correctness like a weapon to crush the professor whilst trying to claim the moral high ground. He tries to lighten the situation by being familiar, she cries harrassment, he takes a call from his wife, Carol rebukes him for being patronising. If he tries to explain his position or reasoning, she shuts up shop and repeatedly says "I don't understand". The exact words he uses are more important to her than his true meaning. The more he tries to understand her, the less she tries to understand him. In the end there is no room left for compromise, no accord and no civility between the two. When Macy punches her at the end, there's almost a sense of relief as she has gone way beyond reasonable behaviour but this relief is mixed with horror; Macy's problems have now only just begun. A moment of pent up frustration and anger will destroy the man.

I'm not sure what all of Mamet's themes are supposed to be in this film, but I got the sense that a type of man; flawed, patronising and in a comfort zone is under threat from the new wave of political correctness and militant social thinking. Does the treatment he receives from Carol really fit his "crimes"? One chilling bit is where he's walking through the campus and he feels alienated from the students, and there are signs up on the walls (presumably put up by the students or a committee) with political correct propaganda on them. As in Orwell's "1984", the thought police target language to bring people down.

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4 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
Oleanna: the sham promised land behind Academia?, 20 August 2007

Author: oowawa from California

One writer perceptively suggests that the term "Oleanna" was used to describe swampland being sold as prime real estate.

I think the primary context in which the title "Oleanna" is to be understood appears in a "folk" stanza preceding Mamet's published edition of the play:

"Oh to be in 'Oleanna,'/ That's where I would rather be,/ Than be bound in Norway/ And drag the chains of slavery."

And so, Oleanna is a version of a Utopian promised land, and in the context of the play, the gateway to this better tomorrow is through the halls of Academia. Susan, the victim of her own false expectations of how the university is to transform her existence, repeatedly mentions the struggle she had to endure in order to get into college. For her, academic success is central to her vision of a better life. John, the pedantic professor, also sees Academia as the means to a comfortable, upper middle class existence with his new house, wife, and son. All he needs to do is make tenure, and his future is secured.

However, John presents himself as an academic bad-boy who debunks the very Academia with which he is trying to secure his comfortable future. This ridicule of the academic process strikes at the heart of Carol's dreams of a better future through education. She quite rightly sees that the professor is trying to have it both ways--playing the academic outsider while trying to kiss-up to the tenure committee in order to ensure his cushy new home in the suburbs. When someone's dreams are threatened, they become angry and strike out, however they can.

This is a brilliant movie. Anyone working in a high school or university, and anyone contemplating an academic career, needs to watch it, and allow it to soak deep into the structure of the brain. Perhaps that academic career isn't such a good idea, after all. Maybe that utopian real estate is really swampland. At any rate, one needs to be very, very careful when dealing with students.

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6 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
Under appreciated Mamet film/play., 23 July 2001
Author: tspeaker from Nashville, TN

One general misunderstanding (in my opinion) of Mamet is that he tries to write realistic dialog. In Oleanna, Mamet seems to want to speak directly through each character in a very academic verse which is well suited to the film/play. The issues of sexual misconduct and the way perspectives differ between men and women make this an interesting journey. And if you are a Bill Macy fan, you will like the movie.

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