Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 12-September-04
Spoiler Rating: Medium

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)

In "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," Maggie Smith enjoys the sort of role every actress must dream of: she's the vibrant, eccentric, desirable, and rather tragic center to a story whose origin as a stage play is evident through rich characters and character-driven situations. In the last 35 years Smith has received a title from the Queen of England and acclaim as a great British thespian of a certain age (in movies like Harry Potter and "Gosford Park"), but she might well look upon her stint as Jean Brodie (and resultant Oscar) as evidence of a career in its prime.

At first glance, the film looks like it belongs in the inspirational-teacher genre that Julia Roberts killed (or at least maimed) last year, but it quickly reveals itself as something different, nay, more. An instructor at a posh Edinburgh school during the 1930s, Miss Brodie is a most particular type of hopeless romantic. She defies convention in favor of broad experience, the pursuit of beauty, and the passionate devotion to lofty ideals. Her lessons, delivered to a cherished few called "Brodie girls," do not involve books or recitations but a contemplation of art and the occasional fantasy about perfection gained or true love lost. In her personal life (barely distinct from her professional one), she practices what she preaches by dressing her sexy spinster's frame in bright colors, engaging in an affair with a married painter named Teddy (Robert Stephens), and ardently espousing the promise of Mussolini, whom she views as a larger-than-life man in a prosaic world.

Like every nonconformist, Miss Brodie has her detractors, and the fascinating thing about the movie is that they often have a point. Her chief opponent is the headmistress (Celia Johnson), who looks vigilantly for an excuse to get rid of her and at one time tries to use her messy, unconcealed romantic life to gain the upper hand. (In addition to Teddy, Miss Brodie has a go with the music teacher played by Gordon Jackson.) But years go by before a legitimate condemnation can be found, and the melancholy twist is that Miss Brodie herself nurtures its source. She fails to see the true nature of her influence over her favorite girls, including ringleader Sandy (Pamela Franklin) and wallflower Mary (Jane Carr), painting them in her mind as archetypes instead of real people and learning her mistake painfully and too late.

Smith never shies away from the complexity of her character, rendering her (convincingly) as a gutsy heroine, a foolish snob, and a sad, lonely woman facing down middle age. Like her one-time lover, the painter (who is essentially a prick but has his moments), you want to shake her out of her blinkered, starry-eyed outlook even before you realize it's going to cause trouble. While revolutionaries like Mussolini dream of refashioning the world for selfish aggrandizement, Miss Brodie dreams of doing so to make it a better place, since in most ways she has already given up on herself. Being the kind of person she needs to be (i.e., a teacher of Life) doesn't equate to being the kind of person whom others can easily tolerate, understand, or learn from; and this makes her story a most touching and memorable lesson.

Copyright © 2004 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.