Oleanna

Oleanna is based on a play written by David Mamet. The play premiered in 1992 and the film was released in 1994.

Oleanna might be flawed with shaky & stagey acting and heavy-handed dialogue, but besides that, it's a damn interesting film. An undergrad student sits with her professor in his office. The student asks questions. She claims not to have understood anything, not the course, not the professor's book; she is concerned about the grade she got/will get. The professor tries to explain. He is constantly interrupted by telephone calls. The discussion becomes more & more animated. They enter into a debate about the university as institution. That segment of the film ends with the professor's physical attempt to make the studen listen. In the next scene, we see them again, but now they are accusor/the accused. On behalf of an unnamed "group", she has initiated an investigation of possible sexual harrassment. His tenure position is then threatened.

I'm a little surprised to see that some reviewers understood this as being a film that wages a war against feminism. They would see the Professor as being a representative of Mamet's own views (that Oleanna is weak and "of questionable sexuality") and hold Oleanna to be an embodiment of Mamet's feminist ghosts. But I don't buy that. The Professor is depicted as self-indulgent, pompous and lacking insight into the power he holds. It does not seem to me that Mamet is interested in showing why Oleanna's accusation is outrageous, but rather, he shows the background of power dynamics locked at a standstill.

Mamet focuses on speech, and how speech is productive or non-productive. The two main characters, the Professor and the students, both become intermingled in institutional power. John is the man who gives grades and holds lectures - Carol is the person who files a seemingly off-target charge against John, supported by a "group". This seems not to be so much a film about sexual harrassment and feminism but rather a very cynical film about power struggles in which it is always unclear for whom a person is talking and what issues are at stake. The characters constantly complain that they don't "understand" - but it is always clear what understanding would be here.

Oleanna is also about our reactions; whose words are we to take seriously? What does the role of class, gender and position mean here? A bad interpretation of this is that we are asked to take "sides" and that this will depend on our gender etc:

"The most illuminating value of "Oleanna" is that it demonstrates so clearly how men and women can view the same events through entirely different prisms. With all the best will in the world, despite a real effort, I cannot see the professor as guilty. I see the student as a monstrous creature who masks her own inadequacies with a manufactured ideological attack; she is failing the course not because she is a bad student but because her teacher is a sexist pig."
Says Robert Ebert, critic. And I, with all the best will in the world, can't see how he sees only "a manufactured ideological attack".

Mamet's film is no masterpiece - not in the slightest - but the questions he raises here are important.