Big Magilla wrote:If not outright anti-Semitic, it comes dangerously close with Peter Sarsgaard's character all the things her bettors warned her against.
Anti-Semitism is a constant team in An Education. Most of the characters in it, from the headmistress through Jenny's parents to Jenny herself, are driven by it in the different ways they react toward Sarsgaard's David, whose attractiveness derives from being an exotic, dangerously persuasive Other, which is all about him being Jewish. But the film is not in any way anti-Semitic. The lack of distinction is a sorry product of simplistic PC oriented method of evaluating ideas and the way they are manifested.
Jenny's pseudo rebel, with which she toys being safely guarded by her deeply inherited conservatism and a confidence deeply rooted in her belonging to the main social section, is mirrored by David's conflicting emotions as someone who forever will be shutout of it. From Moshe Mendelssohn to the Coen brothers, from Baruch Spinoza to Sabin, the fascinations and bewilderment Jews felt for the Christian culture they were operating in but never fully immersed in combined with the supremacy/inferiority complex attached to it, made for major driving force – in philosophy, the arts, science, business – you name it (ok, not sports), but also it might be manifested in more personal ways, such as David's pathetically endearing, self suggestive attempt to act as if his relationship with Jenny is the real deal. Maybe it's the racially built in Shylock in me, but I felt that in En Education there was a sense of compassion and understanding for David's motives and actions.
Edited By Uri on 1266054666