This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Coffee, Tea or Me
Plot Overview
Old maid ("bitter old virgin,")
history teacher Barbara Covett (Dame Judi Dench) is facing retirement
a year off and missing her special friend Jennifer Dodd who moved
away after last term and got engaged. She now has no confidantes
save her old cat Portia about to be put down and her multi-volume
personal journal she's kept since childhood … to the neglect
of her sweet sister. This “battle ax” is unpopular with staff and students
alike. Now she's got “such a dread of ending my days alone.”
Newly minted art teacher Sheba Hart
(Cate Blanchett) has fait
une sensation, as the French say. Everybody wants to make
her acquaintance. Barbara puts her down as, “”the wispy novice. Is she a sphinx
or simply stupid? Artfully dishevelled today. The tweedy tramp
coat is an abhorrence. It seems to say ‘I'm just like you.’
But clearly she's not. A fey person, I suspect. This is in
contrast to the students who adhere to a uniform dress code.
Barbara helps
Sheba break up a playground squabble, which results in an invitation
to join her and some colleagues after work for tea. This in turn leads
to an invitation to a family dinner. A hopeful Barbara “poshes up,”
puts her best foot forward, and begins a friendship with Sheba.
Alas that the latter harbors some larceny in her bones resulting in
Barbara discovering her in a compromising position with a fifteen-year-old
student Steven Connolly (Andrew Simpson.) Does she turn her in, ruining
their friendship, or will she deal with it privately?
Ideology
Back in her halcyon days in swinging
London, Sheba at twenty had a tryst with her professor Richard Hart
(Bill Nighy) who left his wife & family for her. They got married
and had a “non-stop
f_ck fest.” Eventually the lust died and they settled
into a quotidian marriage. They had two children—one of them
special needs. Now the dad's a semi-retired lecturer and the mom's
become a school teacher. A sly tenth year student is coming on to
her. Sheba confesses to her friend, "I hadn't been pursued like this for years … I knew
it was wrong, and immoral, and completely ridiculous, but, I don't
know. I just allowed it to happen."
Her course was a typical one charted
by, (Prov. 30:20) “Such is the
way of an adulterous woman; she eateth, and wipeth her mouth, and
saith, I have done no wickedness.” The movie at the early tea
even displays the metaphorical cream mustache to be wiped off, and
later the same with a milk mustache on her new friend Annabelle. There's
also the lady's caution, “Lasagna seems to disagree with my bowels; I'll ask for a
small portion.” Later she'll upchuck in the bathroom
but that's due to tension. And there's also the cat puke to wipe up.
This proverb has to do with rationalization; instead of pursuing a dainty analysis to get a correct result, the tart chomps through it bite after bite, chew, chew, chew. She ruminates on it as it were, and then in a flourish there's the result, voilà, she's guiltless. Sheba spells it out:
This is going
to sound sick, but something in me felt … entitled. You know,
I've been good all my adult life. I've been a decent wife, a dutiful
mother coping with Ben. This voice inside me kept saying “Why
shouldn't you be bad, why shouldn't you transgress? I mean, you've
earned the right.”
A more universal examination of rationalization in the same vein was
given by Henry Miller in a chronicle:
[W]hat I choose to eat [is] more important than the eater, each one eating the other and consequently eating, the verb, ruler of the roost. In the act of eating the host is violated and justice defeated temporarily. The plate and what's on it, through the predatory power of the intestinal apparatus, commands attention and unifies the spirit, first hypnotizing it, then slowly swallowing it, then masticating it, then absorbing it. The spiritual part of the being passes off like a scum, leaving absolutely no evidence of its passage, vanishes. Vanishes even more completely than a point in space after a mathematical discourse. The fever, which may return tomorrow, bears the same relation to life as the mercury in a thermometer bears to heat, which is what was to be proved and thus consecrates the meatballs and spaghetti. To chew while thousands chew, each chew an act of murder, gives the necessary social cast from which you look out the window and see that every human kind can be slaughtered justly, or maimed, or starved, or tortured because while chewing, the mere advantage of sitting in a chair with clothes on, wiping the mouth with a napkin, enables you to comprehend what the wisest men have never been able to comprehend, namely that there is no other way of life possible. (101)
Rationalizations tend to be circular
and invincible. When lunchroom gossip about his wife catches
up to Richard, he complains, “I knew who you were when we met. You were young. I knew it
might get tough, but I was prepared. You're a good mother, but at
times you've been a f_cking lousy wife. Why didn't you come to me?
You could have told me how lonely you were. You never trusted me to
help you. I'm not saying I was so f_cking fabulous, but I was
here.” Barbara is more intense, “Judas had the dignity to hang himself,
but only according to Matthew, the most sentimental of the apostles.”
The police might also have their say, she could get up to two years.
Production Values
“”
was directed by Richard Eyre. It was written by Patrick Marber and
Zöe Heller based more or less on the latter's 2003 novel. It
stars Cate Blanchett, Judi Dench and Andrew Simpson. Dench and Blanchett
are first rate. The actors being British are all accomplished Thespians.
Kudos to Max Lewis who played son Ben with Down's Syndrome. His part
was eminently tailored for a natural portrayal. Making him a wizard
in the Christmas pageant was a stroke of genius; his features seemed
to mark him as being touched by the gods. Andrew Simpson was an actual
16-year-old actor playing fifteen-year-old Steven Connolly.
MPAA rated it R for language and some aberrant sexual content. Its [British] profanity includes: piss, shit, prick, Christ, dickhead & arsehole. C_nt & f_ck are used once and twelve times respectively, the former being more prominent in British & Australian speech than American. Runtime is 1½ hours.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
This one is a mixture of obsessions and
duties; it takes the breath away. It is very well done overall,
but the material itself may stick in one's craw. Only for the brave.
Movie Ratings
Action Factor: Girlie action scenes. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Average special effects. Video Occasion: For serious viewing. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture quotation from the Authorized Version. Pub. 1611. Rev. 1769. Software.
Miller, Henry. Tropic of Capricorn. Copyright © 1961, Grove Press Inc., New York: Grove Press. Print.
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