Britney and I have a Netflix account, and it's awesome. I won't bore you with the reasons why it's awesome, but it is. Between Red Box and Netflix, Blockbuster will be obsolete pretty soon. You can get some of the movies directly to your TV through Netflix, and they have pretty much every movie ever made. It's awesome.

Well, there are several movies that we've wanted to share our thoughts and feelings about, so we'll start with the one we've watched most recently: An Education.

We chose to watch An Education because Marie suggested it on her blog, and after previewing it, we thought it looked good.

So here's my analysis of/feelings about the movie. At the beginning of the movie I felt kinda dumb and a little envious almost of Jenny, the main character, because I don't know French or Latin or any of the "high culture" stuff that she does in the movie. But then she goes to a Ravel concert, and I totally know who Maurice Ravel is, so I was like, "What now, Jenny?". Plus, they called it classical, but it's not; it's impressionistic. Anyway, she's 16 and she starts going out with this 30ish-year-old, and from the very beginning I knew that that was a bad idea. You see, Jenny is this really bright girl with a bright future including a possible Oxford education after prep school (the movie is set in 1960s London), but as soon as she starts going out with this guy he's a bad influence. He's a swindler and a sweet talker and he convinces her to ditch school to go to auctions and Oxford and even Paris. He eventually proposes, and she accepts. She doesn't even finish prep school. Now, this little summary of the movie makes it seem very trivial, but of course there's all kinds of drama built up around it and everything. At one point, Jenny is talking to her head mistress, and basically her conclusion is that school is pointless because it only leads to a boring life while she can have all the fun she wants without an education by marrying this guy. The head mistress doesn't even answer her objections--not even at the end, which we'll get to in a second. So, here's my answer to Jenny, for what it's worth:

She wouldn't be able to have any fun if she didn't know anything. Education is everything. Jenny is all in to French music and films and stuff, but where the heck did she learn French? Education broadens your horizons and helps you to see the big picture more clearly. It gives you the tools necessary in order to understand and appreciate the world around you. That's what an education is good for. It's not just about jobs: it's about having knowledge.

Anyway, so as I was saying, she doesn't even finish school, which is retarded because she only had to take some exams or something to be done. I mean, even if she ended up marrying the guy, which she doesn't, she could have at least taken the stupid tests. And then, it turns out that the guy was already married and was just playing her, so then she's really screwed, or at least she should have been. In reality, things don't turn out very bad for Jenny at all. She blames her bad decisions on her parents, who did encourage her to marry the guy, but without all the information, and her parents accept the blame. She apologizes to one of her teachers, and she helps her get in to Oxford. That's right, she ends up going to Oxford after all. She gets off completely scotch free. Where's the poetic justice? I mean, the writers could have at least made her go to Cambridge or something--you know, like her second choice. At least that would have provided consequences for her actions while still giving us all the happy ending we so desperately want.

Perhaps the most upsetting part is at the very end when Jenny makes a statement about her future life. She comments on how much more mature she is than the others around her, and she says that a guy asks her to go to Paris with him. She says that she's dying to go to Paris "as if [she'd] never been." Can you believe that? Poor fool thinks he's taking her to this romantic place for the first time, and she's just playing dumb. It's almost like the film is saying that it was good for Jenny to make bad choices because it made her somehow better or more mature than everyone else. She got everything that she wanted anyway, and she can just pretend like the bad stuff never happened.

Now, don't get me wrong. The film was entertaining, so it achieved at least part of its purpose. It was somewhat thought provoking, well acted, well directed. Also, in spite of her bad choices, Jenny was a likable character. Out of five stars, I would give it three-and-a-half.