David Mamet’s play Oleanna gained notoriety by debuting immediately following Anita Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment by Clarence Thomas as he attempted to win a seat on the Supreme Court. Those hearings brought the ideas of perceived sexual harassment to the forefront of mainstream awareness, prompting discussions of the subject in all forms of the media. Oleanna, in both the stage and film versions, seems to serve little purpose other than to prompt similar discussions of perceptions and attitudes regarding sexual power struggles.
Both the play and the film center around a student named Carol, played in the film by Debra Eisenstadt, who feels confused and inferior to her fellow students after having failed a midterm exam. She goes to her professor, played by William H. Macy in the original stage production and the film, to ask for help. The professor, who is preoccupied with the fact that he’s about to close a deal on the house he’s buying, agrees to help her and speaks frankly with her about his personal philosophy about education.
After this initial meeting, the student files sexual harassment charges against the professor, citing an anecdote he used and the fact that he touched her during their meeting. She gains the backing of an unnamed group of some kind and, gaining some self confidence, she becomes the aggressor. She becomes adamant about getting the respect she feels she’s been deprived of for most of her life.
The professor, who’s up for tenure, tries to reason with her and get her to withdraw her accusations. When that fails, he begins to feel that his job, and, in turn, his future, depends on smoothing this matter out immediately. He tries to restrain her by grabbing her and sitting her down to listen to his pleas to drop the charges, but that merely incites her to file another round of charges against him.
It is interesting to note that in directing the film based on his own play, Mamet hasn’t done much of anything to flesh out the characters to make them seem more human or real. In most film versions of stage plays, we usually find the characters engaging in situations not allowed by the limitations of the stage. These situations further explain the characters’ backgrounds, ideologies or simple routine activities that allow for a better understanding of how a character gets from one scene to the next and why.
In Mamet’s film, we never learn much about the characters at all, other than the information that is made available in the conversations between the two main characters. In fact, other than the opening sequence that establishes the setting as a university, only during a shot of John, the professor, at his new home and a shot of Carol getting some flyers printed does the action leave the professor’s office.
Further information is left out of the character’s backgrounds. The name of the university would lead to discussion of the ideology of the faculty that is employed there. The name of the group that Carol finds solace in would provide some insight as to what their (and her) agenda might be. The actual subject of the class that John teaches is never spelled out as it might provide insight into the reason his book, and, as a result, his character, takes the attitude about higher education that it does. Mamet simply refuses to get specific about anything that could or would lead to a discussion involving anything but what the characters say.
The feeling of the film thereby becomes extremely claustrophobic. Plays have the built-in limitation of being fixed to a certain location due to staging, but this film comes off looking like nothing more than a filmed play. The performances are top-notch, but by the final reel you’d give anything to have the characters go for a walk and forget the whole thing.
2.0 out of 5.0 stars
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