Release year: 2003Director: Mike Newell
Main characters: Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts)
Betty Warren (Kirsten Dunst)
Joan Brandwyn (Julia Stiles)
Giselle Levy (Maggie Gyllenhaal)
Connie Baker (Ginnifer Goodwin)
Giselle Levy (Maggie Gyllenhaal)
Connie Baker (Ginnifer Goodwin)
Bill Dunbar (Dominic West)
Runtime: 2 hours, 5 minutes
Rated: PG- 13 for sexual content and thematic issues
The setting is 1953. Art history teacher Katherine Watson (Roberts) heads from California to Wellesley College (an all-girls school) to begin teaching in a position she fought hard to obtain. While she believes that she will be inspired by her fellow women who choose to go on to higher education, she is more than surprised at their lack of progressiveness. Boston Globe columnist Wesley Morris sums up Katharine’s dilemma perfectly: “she arrives from UC Berkeley thoroughly modern and every inch the movie star. In her eyes and the movie's, the Wellesley of yesteryear has a student body whose unofficial major appears to be housewifery.” She is baffled by the students, who seem so future oriented (especially Joan Brandwyn (Stiles), who has a hefty résumé, is pre-law, and and at one time has aspirations to get into Yale), want only to be married right out of school. And then? “And then, I’ll be married,” Joan says, when her boyfriend, Tommy, proposes to her.
This film is one of many in my DVD collection, and I have seen it five times. While I can identify with the courage these Wellesley girls have in being able to attend college, when just a few years ago from the movie’s setting it would have been inconceivable to do so, I am increasingly frustrated with each viewing at their refusal to do anything post-college than get married.
But was "Mona Lisa Smile" really what it was like for the women at Wellesley College 55 years ago? Claudia Puig of USA Today agrees that young audiences will find it hard to understand that “the notion that family and career were mutually exclusive propositions only 50 years ago.” And overachiever Joan Brandwyn, Puig says, “is somewhere in between, a girl who dreams of going to law school but succumbs to the pull of marriage and motherhood. But, for some reason, we're supposed to believe that her wifely motivations are purer and more admirable than those of the other conventional coeds.”
According to Chicago Tribune critic Michael Wilmington, the film’s writers, Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal, “were inspired to make ‘Mona,’ they say, by the fact that Hillary Rodham Clinton attended Wellesley in the '60s and their writing here is often as slick, melodramatic and self-convinced as the average political ad. …. You might assume that the fact ‘Mona Lisa Smile’ was based on Hillary Clinton's Wellesley years might mean that the authors intended Katherine as a kind of Hillary surrogate.”
In the end, Katherine’s progressive feminism seems to get through to the girls about aspiring to have their own goals, not just their husband’s. This is especially true for Betty Warren (Dunst) who had talked about her idea of marital bliss ad nauseum until her husband cheated on her. Sadly, though, what is most embarrassing about Katherine’s liberal rants is that she realizes she must bite her tongue. Feminism, after all, is about choosing, and though it may not seem so, some girls do choose to be homemakers.
Even though the story behind "Mona Lisa Smile" may be a tad skewed in its representations, I still enjoy this movie, because in the end all of the women find out who they are truly meant to be.
This film is one of many in my DVD collection, and I have seen it five times. While I can identify with the courage these Wellesley girls have in being able to attend college, when just a few years ago from the movie’s setting it would have been inconceivable to do so, I am increasingly frustrated with each viewing at their refusal to do anything post-college than get married.
But was "Mona Lisa Smile" really what it was like for the women at Wellesley College 55 years ago? Claudia Puig of USA Today agrees that young audiences will find it hard to understand that “the notion that family and career were mutually exclusive propositions only 50 years ago.” And overachiever Joan Brandwyn, Puig says, “is somewhere in between, a girl who dreams of going to law school but succumbs to the pull of marriage and motherhood. But, for some reason, we're supposed to believe that her wifely motivations are purer and more admirable than those of the other conventional coeds.”
According to Chicago Tribune critic Michael Wilmington, the film’s writers, Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal, “were inspired to make ‘Mona,’ they say, by the fact that Hillary Rodham Clinton attended Wellesley in the '60s and their writing here is often as slick, melodramatic and self-convinced as the average political ad. …. You might assume that the fact ‘Mona Lisa Smile’ was based on Hillary Clinton's Wellesley years might mean that the authors intended Katherine as a kind of Hillary surrogate.”
In the end, Katherine’s progressive feminism seems to get through to the girls about aspiring to have their own goals, not just their husband’s. This is especially true for Betty Warren (Dunst) who had talked about her idea of marital bliss ad nauseum until her husband cheated on her. Sadly, though, what is most embarrassing about Katherine’s liberal rants is that she realizes she must bite her tongue. Feminism, after all, is about choosing, and though it may not seem so, some girls do choose to be homemakers.
Even though the story behind "Mona Lisa Smile" may be a tad skewed in its representations, I still enjoy this movie, because in the end all of the women find out who they are truly meant to be.
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(thanks to photobucket.com for the picture.)
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