Oleanna

This film is basically about a student who cannot accept she's failing class and decides to ruin her teacher's life by framing him. Around this basis, a quite witty dialogue is unfolded, which makes the movie intellectually stimulating and powerful. Additionally, it depicts the invalidity of some axioms of both professor and student community and portraits how people manipulate the truth to serve their personal interests. A very strong point is how pompous and cliche arguments about void pseudo-liberties alienate people from truly disastrous and desperate situations. As I see from other reviews, the play was much better, but unfortunately we didn't have the chance to see it here in Greece yet, so my first impression of Mamet's work was from this movie.

David Mamet can write a play! This one made me writhe with anger at the P.C. crowd in our universities (not that all PC is bad--I am a linguist)who are watering down the national education. What's wrong with saying what you mean? I am a woman and I cannot actually believe that there are two sides on this issue...a pat on the back cannot possibly be seen (alone) as sexual harassment, nor can writing a very bad essay merit an "A" in my idealistic mind. A poor writer is a poor writer, no matter what the background. Many of out best American writers have come from the working class. Should education be modified yet again to accommodate those who do not care to work for their merits? Just a thought. Would love to hear more from others...

Unique, hyper-real film where the dialogue is the main plot - and what a rivetting plot it is. I was very skeptical about Oleanna, and was really resistant to it - but was very surprised to find myself succumbing to it. If you love language, and know enough language, Oleanna will be a joy for you: because the dialogue is loaded with jokes about dialogue. You'll be able to pick the places where Bill Macy is saying non-words, pretentious words or jargons in his monologues - and notice where somebody is talking ambiguously, or not saying anything at all.

Its about words, talking and meaning. So there are lots of words for good reason.

Its very dialoguey dialogue: not the kind of things people say, but the kind of things writers write. Reminiscent of the verbal gymnastics of Samuel Beckett, and the twisting meanings of Catch-22. Or perhaps the comedic pretentiousness of Hal Hartley. Meaning is controlled by the powerful - that's the key. Whoever controls the conversation, the language, in this movie - controls the situation. So everything is either ambiguous or figurative. Mainly, the exact things the two say are not what's key. Its which one of them is talking.

The performances - well, Macy at least - are in an appropriately hyper-real tone to suit the hyper-real dialogue. The girl is not very good, but this is still a masterpiece of language. Its static, centring on two characters and one room, but for good reason - to put the words centre stage. I'm so shocked that i just watched a movie with two characters and one room, and was not only not bored once, but hanging on each word and found that the time flew by.

The moral of the story is that things are bound to go wrong if you talk to somebody for the length of an entire movie. You're bound to go nuts. The viewer is bound to go nuts just listening to William H Macy in the first half-hour of the movie - you'll be amazed that purely talking to someone, using words, can make you feel that you're trapped, that you can't win or even escape.

Quite brilliant, really.

8/10. Essential viewing. I never knew dialogue held this power. A unique discovery.

The dialogue is difficult to get past -- you want to grab the characters one at a time by the throat so the other one can at least finish a sentence or thought without interruption. But if you stick with it, the characters do deliver on what had to be a difficult script. And I found the irony of the story line to be the reward. It is a mind game -- not for the casual viewer.

One general misunderstanding (in my opinion) of Mamet is that he tries to write realistic dialog. In Oleanna, Mamet seems to want to speak directly through each character in a very academic verse which is well suited to the film/play. The issues of sexual misconduct and the way perspectives differ between men and women make this an interesting journey. And if you are a Bill Macy fan, you will like the movie.