I had the privilege of attending a middle-school graduation the other day. Watching the teenage (and pre-teenage) kids awkwardly parading around in their just-for-this-day finery, nervously checking each other out, tentatively trying on the "all-grown-up" mode, I was struck by the significance of this rite of passage. And I realized that the graduation, even for all its – forgive me – pomp and circumstance, represented just the ceremonial tip of the iceberg in these kids’ school experiences.
"School": the word is, for most of us, I venture to say, fraught with all kinds of emotion and memory. As such, it has proven over the years to be fertile ground for Hollywood to plow. From kindergarten through graduate school, writers and directors have found it hard to resist anchoring their stories in one of society’s great communal experiences.
Of course, this being graduation season, one of The Best "School" Movies EVER!! that comes immediately to mind is Mike Nichols’ 1967 masterpiece, The Graduate. A classic "coming-of-age" film (as are so many "school" movies), The Graduate took a wry look at seduction – from the carnal variety promised in the smoky voice of Anne Bancroft, to the corporate kind embodied by the DuPonts and 3Ms of the world ("Plastics."), a world seemingly at the feet of young Benjamin Braddock, fresh out of college, and whose first preference would be to do, well, pretty much nothing.
No list of "school" movies would be complete without Dead Poets Society. Sure, it's pro forma, but its message is stiil uplifting, its premise not too contrived. Carpe diem, indeed. For some reason, Dead Poets reminds me of another film anchored partly in a "school" setting, albeit this school is a bit more stodgy and the instructors not exactly cut from Robin Williams' cloth: Chariots of Fire. With several of its key characters ensconced at Cambridge, Chariots paints vividly one picture of upper-class England and its prejudices in the early 20th century.
Some more recent fare that I have enjoyed includes The School of Rock, a warm, loving take on Rock N' Roll Of A Certain Age, as passionately taught by Jack Black to a collection of unsuspecting private-school kids and their mortified parents. The kids were real musicians coached to be actors, not the other way around; I found it disarmingly charming. And Spellbound and its somewhat less inspired fictional counterpart, Akeelah and the Bee, manage to make spelling bees into high drama. And I must confess to a weakness for Matilda, directed by Danny DeVito and starring a precocious Mara Wilson. It features a truly evil headmistress cut from the classic mold.
Stand and Deliver and Dangerous Minds were nonfiction and fiction representations, respectively, of inner-city schools where kids respond with more or less enthusiasm to teachers who care intensely about their students' futures.
Now, "school" means different things to different people. For Animal House's John Blutarsky, school was a convenient venue for debauchery. For Jeff Spicoli, Ridgemont High was appropriately named - at least its second part was . . .
"School?" 1980s? The Breakfast Club. Duhh.
Three classics this dilettante admits to Never Having Seen All The Way Through:
So shoot me! Better yet - tell me your Best "School" Movies EVER!!
And you don't even have to write them 100 times on the board . . .
FIRST OF ALL, mad props to LithiumCola for his avant garde debut FNATM diary last week: C'est marveilleux, monsieur! Good to have you on board, LC - looking forward to many more such efforts!
SECONDLY, HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO FNATM, which celebrates one year tomorrow! I like to think this series has made a niche for itself - and all of it is due to you, dear readers, cinephiles, dilettantes, commenters, and mojo-spreaders! And of course, I cannot thank enough Land of Enchantment and LithiumCola for their spirited, diligent and enthusiastic contributions to this delightful weekly party! Hooray for all of us!! Thanks, everyone!