Princeton: A Search for Answers

This eye-opening and cerebral short film about some of Princeton classes and its programs is a challenging experience devoted to the cause of education. From literature and philosophy, to marathon and math topics, here we get to follow lectures from some of the college's teachers and hear the students, a kind of interaction that is always noble because everyday in our lives we are masters and students exchaning information or finding ways to improve life in the world, or beyond if possible. And the most important question of all: Why? You gotta ask, you gotta find alternatives, you gotta try to understand and with some results you get to some enlihgtnement but the why's never fade as long as you live. This film shows the importance of learning about something which goes beyond only getting a degree and making tons of money.

I don't have many memories from the classes, it's all bits and pieces so I won't form a biased or judgmental thinking from it, I'll leave it all to you to get insights or not. It is a confusing, kind of rushed and slightly difficult to follow at times due to its themes - though the classes were presented on a very human level that some aspects are easy to feel connected (it depends on the topics you like more, it'll get you a better comprehension). Most of this project feels like a commercial to Princeton University but made for a limited crowd the movie-going people of 1974 and possibly future viewers. It seems like a very interesting, cultured, diversed and open-minded place to attend; it feels like the college experience I'd like to have and it's far from what movies tend to present as recreation parks where doctors and teachers are tyrants, and students are just there to have some fun. It's all about learning, knowing and developing the first steps to a wider world of experiences.

Academy Award winner as Best Short Documentary, "Princeton: A Search for Answers" is a good film that mirrors and exemplifies what the learning and the teaching process is about: to exchange experiences, make all parties think for themselves and question things time and again, search for answers all the time.

Looking back at how the college experience changed over the years (though I guess it depends on where one lives) what's killing the system is the political use students and teachers use to spread ideologies and some propaganda on classes, arrogantly sharing their views and making divisions of a whole class. It's a kind of dangerous ground to peple who are easily influenceable, it interrupts the process of questioning and learning because they're being spoonfed and are not allowed to do their own reasoning or research. As I kept watching the film I noticed those early adults with a heightened sense of curiosity, excitment and humor. The cause of education isn't the same anymore...yet we dare to question everything. 7/10

A sociologist specialising in how to modernise the Third World has acquired official gadfly status, expected to speak against the motion, whatever the debate. One day, his arguments look like actually overturning the motion, and he hurriedly changes his viewpoint and starts to speak in favour.

To declare a disinterest, I'm the lifelong enemy of universities, and this kind of anecdote leaves me mighty glad I was never a student. As other critics have pointed out, this film looks more like an advertisement for Princeton than the Oscar-winning documentary it is. As an advertisement, it is quite good of its kind, evoking the glory of higher education as such, though not singling-out the Princeton factor with any great precision. Apparently it's to do with the single-faculty arrangement - graduates, undergraduates and research combined - which does not convey much to this particular outsider.

A strikingly glamorous girl-student starts to talk about her virginity in ringing tones, before we realize that she is quoting Shakespeare in drama class. An Irish physics student shares with us his excitement that he might be able to make a difference to the world - a common enough sensation at student age (or warrior-class on my timesheet), though the Irish debating style does carry its peculiar charm.

Mostly, though, it's an impressionist job. Choral works echoing around Gothic spires, then suddenly Scott Joplin. A major observatory trying to probe outer space, then an Afro-haired student enjoying a beer in the common room, speaking some rather predictable lines about diversity. (Some nice aerial shots of old Princeton, though.)

To me, there's nothing much being taught at Princeton that you couldn't Google for yourself today. But almost fifty years in, that's called the benefit of hindsight.

What an utter junk. Camera sucks, color too, geeks speak like robots on drugs. Totally rejectable, this movie.