I enjoyed this movie a great deal. The acting was excellent across the board and the story about the relationship of two school teachers and what transpires between them is involving. The problem for me was that in reading the reviews for the film I found that the reviewers revealed way too much about the plot. I found this to be one of those times when it was best to know as little as possible going in since there was a chance that knowing plot points might signal later revelations. Simply put the reviewers said too much so after a certain point it became clear what was going to happen, The result was that I enjoyed the film less than I might have other wise. Take my advice ignore what people say about the film and just see it
224 Reviews
Jarring Notes Superbly Performed
littlemartinarocena26 February 2007
Judi Dench and Cate Blanchet both have played the fierce Queen Elizabeth I in their careers and here they fight for the crown in a royal match that is as entertaining as it is jarring. Two civilized women breaking into very uncivilized patterns of behavior. A highbrow story with a tabloid sensibility performed with truth and gusto. Bette Davis would have killed for Judi Dench's part at the time of Baby Jane and although there is nothing grotesque in the way Dame Judy presents us her monster, the monster herself is grotesque. She explains, in a witty and consistent voice over, what's in her mind. The center of her intentions become so appallingly clear to us that Cate Blanchet's slowness to catch up becomes exasperating. Maybe her suffocating domestic situation throws her into the arms of her absurdity. She seems a woman searching for validation without any real vocation. A teacher who doesn't believe she can teach, a mediocre wife a light weight mother. Judi Dench is relentlessly solid in her madness made of longing and fears. I left the theater with a desperate need for a double scotch on the rocks, just to take a strange taste off my mouth.
A Tale of Obsession, Loneliness and Machiavellism
claudio_carvalho5 February 2008
The bitter, cynical and lonely Barbara Covett (Judi Dench) is a tough and conservative teacher near to retirement that is loathed by her colleagues and students. In the loneliness of her apartment, she spends her spare time writing her journal, taking care of her old cat Portia and missing her special friend Jennifer Dodd. When Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett) joins the high-school as the new art teacher, Barbara dedicates her attention to the newcomer, writing sharp and unpleasant comments about her behavior and clothes. When Barbara helps Sheba in a difficult situation with two students, the grateful Sheba invites her to have lunch with her family. Sheba introduces her husband and former professor Richard Hart (Bill Nighy), who is about twenty years older than she; her rebellious teenager daughter Polly (Juno Temple); and her son Ben (Max Lewis) that has Dawn Syndrome. Barbara becomes close to Sheba, but when she accidentally discovers that Sheba is having an affair with the fifteen year-old student Steven Connolly (Andrew Simpson), Barbara sees the chance to manipulate and get closer to Sheba, hiding the secret from the school headmaster. When Portia dies and Sheba does not stay with Barbara in the veterinary office to see Ben in a theater play, Barbara plots a Machiavellian revenge against Sheba, creating a scandal and consequent turmoil in their lives.
"Note on a Scandal" is a gem to be discovered by movie lovers. This tale of obsession, loneliness and Machiavellism is supported by a magnificent screenplay and awesome performances of Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett, two of the best actresses of the cinema industry in the present days. The story has drama, romance, passion, lust, obsession and eroticism disclosed in an adequate pace. The development of the lead characters is perfect, disclosing two lonely and obsessed women, one compulsive and loathed by everybody around her, and the other that is the object of desire of the old teacher, her husband and a young student. The result is one of the best movies that I have recently seen. My vote is nine.
Title (Brazil): "Notas Sobre Um Escândalo" ("Notes on a Scandal")
"Note on a Scandal" is a gem to be discovered by movie lovers. This tale of obsession, loneliness and Machiavellism is supported by a magnificent screenplay and awesome performances of Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett, two of the best actresses of the cinema industry in the present days. The story has drama, romance, passion, lust, obsession and eroticism disclosed in an adequate pace. The development of the lead characters is perfect, disclosing two lonely and obsessed women, one compulsive and loathed by everybody around her, and the other that is the object of desire of the old teacher, her husband and a young student. The result is one of the best movies that I have recently seen. My vote is nine.
Title (Brazil): "Notas Sobre Um Escândalo" ("Notes on a Scandal")
State of the art acting by Dench, Blanchett and Nighy
fmoramar29 December 2006
What a treat to watch three of the best actors of our time in the same movie! Judy Dench is an international treasure; Cate Blanchett never looked better or created a more compelling character in any of her other movies, and I had the good fortune to discover Bill Nighy on Broadway in "The Vertical Hour" with Julianne Moore the night before I saw "Notes from a Scandal," and I now want to see everything he's done. A superlative creator of character. "Notes from a Scandal" tells us a lot about the "British" penchant for relishing "scandals" (they invented the tabloid press) and also about the odd, intersecting relationships that have become a nearly commonplace reality in the contemporary world. Both Blanchett and Dench (as Sheba and Barbara) teach at the same Islington secondary school. And both, in very different ways, embark on "inappropriate" relationships that create turmoil in their lives and the lives of their community. Judy Dench conveys the desperate loneliness of her character's life and a remarkable scene of her smoking a cigarette in a bathtub conveys the distinction between her kind of loneliness--an older, unattractive, single woman with no real connections in life--and the more endurable kinds of loneliness that many of us share. This is a gripping film that moves crisply from one scene to the next, missing only a very few beats along the way. A must see.
tense twisted story
antoniotierno25 February 2007
Certainly a very stylish drama, riveting and brilliant, rising above the modern-day thrillers due to stunning performances of two very gifted actresses. It's both dramatic and funny, Judy Dench and Cate Blanchett are delicious and so talented that they turn a misanthrope cat and mouse game into a politically correct entertaining account. This strong emotional battle is not only something about teacher-student sex, it's also an obsessing blackmail. Without exaggerating it could be deemed "memorable", as revelations abound, tempers flare all the time and every single confidence is shared. Never boring and deep.
Front Row at the Opera
char treuse4 January 2007
Watching the emotionally intense black comedy, "Notes on a Scandal," you, too, may feel like its main character, Barbara, who reflects in one of her many voice-overs, "The opera has begun and I have a front-row seat." Directed by Richard Eyre ("Iris," "Stage Beauty" and the exceptional TV version of "Suddenly, Last Summer" with Maggie Smith and Natasha Richardson), "Notes" bravely wades into modern-day Grand Guignol as the tension between its two female stars heads inevitably toward a showdown.
Patrick ("Closer") Marber's melodramatic screenplay cleverly makes use of Barbara's voice-overs as she scribbles in her diary and makes jaded, bitter observations about the world around her. Abundant voice-overs usually point toward shortcomings in a drama, but here they provide irony and serve to enhance the dialog.
In her juiciest role since "Mrs Brown," Judi Dench brings an element of sympathy to Barbara, a closeted, self-loathing lesbian school teacher attracted to the new art teacher, Sheba, played by Cate Blanchett. Madly hoping to wrest the heterosexual Sheba from her husband and two children, one of whom has Down Syndrome, Barbara stumbles upon Sheba's sexual dalliance with a 15-year-old student. In a Machiavellian turn, Barbara hopes to manipulate Sheba by maintaining her secret . . . with strings attached. Need I add that all does not go well?
In fact, escalating histrionic fireworks ensue. Blanchett holds her own in this emotional and physical battle royal, capping her incredible year (2006) that also included outstanding performances in "Babel" and "The Good German." As Sheba's husband, Richard, Bill Nighy also comes through with a powerhouse performance. The moody score by Philip Glass is icing on the cake.
At a tidy 92 minutes, "Notes on a Scandal" is highly concentrated and vivid. The recently announced Golden Globe nominations include Dench, Blanchett and Marber, so we can expect Oscar nods as well.
Patrick ("Closer") Marber's melodramatic screenplay cleverly makes use of Barbara's voice-overs as she scribbles in her diary and makes jaded, bitter observations about the world around her. Abundant voice-overs usually point toward shortcomings in a drama, but here they provide irony and serve to enhance the dialog.
In her juiciest role since "Mrs Brown," Judi Dench brings an element of sympathy to Barbara, a closeted, self-loathing lesbian school teacher attracted to the new art teacher, Sheba, played by Cate Blanchett. Madly hoping to wrest the heterosexual Sheba from her husband and two children, one of whom has Down Syndrome, Barbara stumbles upon Sheba's sexual dalliance with a 15-year-old student. In a Machiavellian turn, Barbara hopes to manipulate Sheba by maintaining her secret . . . with strings attached. Need I add that all does not go well?
In fact, escalating histrionic fireworks ensue. Blanchett holds her own in this emotional and physical battle royal, capping her incredible year (2006) that also included outstanding performances in "Babel" and "The Good German." As Sheba's husband, Richard, Bill Nighy also comes through with a powerhouse performance. The moody score by Philip Glass is icing on the cake.
At a tidy 92 minutes, "Notes on a Scandal" is highly concentrated and vivid. The recently announced Golden Globe nominations include Dench, Blanchett and Marber, so we can expect Oscar nods as well.
A strong, character-driven take on a genre that too often is excessive and tiresome
bob the moo11 December 2007
Barbara Covett is a history teacher who lives alone and is comparatively friendless. The one woman she was friendly with has moved on to another school in a better area but she still has her cat and her diary. When young art teacher Sheba Hart starts in the new term, Barbara keeps her distance to feel her out but she finds quite a nice woman with whom she thinks she can start a friendship. However the discovery of a scandalous secret in Sheba's life means that the relationship takes a darker turn.
From a distance you could see this film as yet another entry into the Fatal Attraction / Single White Female genre in the way that it is essentially about a "normal" relationship that turns sour as it becomes steadily more evident that the "normal" person is actually a tad unhinged. However does this mean that we are going through the motions here and that we will end up with a Dench/Blanchett fight like it's some sort of Bafta Special of Celebrity Wrestling? Well thankfully no. The narrative does head this way to a point of course but it remains engaging and grounded, mainly down to the fact that the story is not strictly one of this specific relationship but rather it is the story of Barbara. This is clear from the fact that the only narration or inner thoughts we get to hear are from her and, although it is not told from her perspective, it is clear that she is the subject of the film rather than Sheba (who is Barbara's subject).
The film paints out a convincingly real Barbara and in a way she reminded me a little of the "Lady of Letters" from Alan Bennett's Talking Heads. In her own world and journal she has developed this aloof attitude of one who is lonely but has convinced herself that she is more than happy to be so. But yet she also still has this edge of desperation, of being so much more needy than she will ever recognise. It is a very well written part and it goes without saying that Dench plays it perfectly delivering in the detail and reigning in any potential for "bunny boiling". The story is well delivered and it is the characters that prevent you really questioning the internal logic too much because it does all convince both within itself but more or less within the wider world as well.
Eyre's direction is good in terms of controlling his cast even if it does feel every inch a BBC TV film that has gotten ahead of itself. Blanchett works well opposite Dench; she knows that the film is not about her character even if her character is key in telling it and her performance is pitched well to reflect this. As another user has already humorously said, Bill Nighy is good as the Bill Nighy character but I was upset that Phil Davis did not get more to do as he is very good at the type of character he played here. Simpson is well cast and makes his character work pretty well considering the demands put on him by the narrative something about his Northern Irish accent that makes me believe it (!).
Overall then an engaging and well-delivered film. At first glance it is another crazy stalker movie but really it is much more than that as the characters are well written and convincing (even if aspects of the narrative aren't to the same degree) and the strength of the lead performances almost goes without saying as a given.
From a distance you could see this film as yet another entry into the Fatal Attraction / Single White Female genre in the way that it is essentially about a "normal" relationship that turns sour as it becomes steadily more evident that the "normal" person is actually a tad unhinged. However does this mean that we are going through the motions here and that we will end up with a Dench/Blanchett fight like it's some sort of Bafta Special of Celebrity Wrestling? Well thankfully no. The narrative does head this way to a point of course but it remains engaging and grounded, mainly down to the fact that the story is not strictly one of this specific relationship but rather it is the story of Barbara. This is clear from the fact that the only narration or inner thoughts we get to hear are from her and, although it is not told from her perspective, it is clear that she is the subject of the film rather than Sheba (who is Barbara's subject).
The film paints out a convincingly real Barbara and in a way she reminded me a little of the "Lady of Letters" from Alan Bennett's Talking Heads. In her own world and journal she has developed this aloof attitude of one who is lonely but has convinced herself that she is more than happy to be so. But yet she also still has this edge of desperation, of being so much more needy than she will ever recognise. It is a very well written part and it goes without saying that Dench plays it perfectly delivering in the detail and reigning in any potential for "bunny boiling". The story is well delivered and it is the characters that prevent you really questioning the internal logic too much because it does all convince both within itself but more or less within the wider world as well.
Eyre's direction is good in terms of controlling his cast even if it does feel every inch a BBC TV film that has gotten ahead of itself. Blanchett works well opposite Dench; she knows that the film is not about her character even if her character is key in telling it and her performance is pitched well to reflect this. As another user has already humorously said, Bill Nighy is good as the Bill Nighy character but I was upset that Phil Davis did not get more to do as he is very good at the type of character he played here. Simpson is well cast and makes his character work pretty well considering the demands put on him by the narrative something about his Northern Irish accent that makes me believe it (!).
Overall then an engaging and well-delivered film. At first glance it is another crazy stalker movie but really it is much more than that as the characters are well written and convincing (even if aspects of the narrative aren't to the same degree) and the strength of the lead performances almost goes without saying as a given.
Great acting, trite story
Philby-324 February 2007
Barbara is a high school teacher, head of the history department in a London Comprehensive which, as she puts it produces "plumbers and shop assistants and no doubt the odd terrorist". She is sharply intelligent but also single, unattractive, unloved and near retirement. The new school year brings in Sheba, youngish, attractive, married mother of two, to teach art. Barbara strikes up an acquaintanceship and discovers that Sheba is carrying on an affair with a 15 year old pupil. Instead of dobbing her in, Barbara uses this knowledge to get closer to Sheba. Then of course the secret gets out.
Put like that it's a pretty trite plot, but Judy Dench, aided by Patrick Marber's acid script, manages to give what might otherwise be a rather pathetic, if mendacious, character some real oomph. We see the earlier part of the story via copious voice-over largely from Barbara's point of view, but then find there's a lot she hasn't told us. It's not that her goal is reprehensible all she wants really is companionship it's that she is so ruthless in pursuing it.
As her target Sheba, Cate Blanchette is equally effective. Her real achievement is in portraying Sheba, the beautiful daughter of a famous economist, as rather a week character, irresolute, caught up in her emotions, a perfect foil for Barbara's steely determination. It is not without significance that it's Steven, her schoolboy lover, who initiates the relationship. She can't stop herself.
Bill Nighy, that expert at shifty characters, plays Sheba's older husband straight, and is very effective. Andrew Simpson as Steven is also very good. There is also a gem of a performance from Michael Maloney as the headmaster, an arch bureaucrat and devotee of political correctness. Phil Davis is also very good in a small part as Brian, another one of Sheba's admirers.
I'm afraid I have a complaint about the music. Phillip Glass is justly famous as a modern music composer. He is often billed as the last of the romantics. But here the score is intrusive, noisy and overdone undoing by overstatement the understated acting on the screen. This was a play, not an opera, and the music was just too much.
The familiar shots of London (from Parliament Hill?) which bookend this film have been showing up a lot in British movies lately. Here everything is shrouded in fog. But there is no ambiguity about this story. The ending is apparently different from Zoe Heller's original novel, but hardly comes as a surprise. What is interesting is what a common story student-teacher sex is. Check out the message board postings on this site. And most of it remains undetected.
Put like that it's a pretty trite plot, but Judy Dench, aided by Patrick Marber's acid script, manages to give what might otherwise be a rather pathetic, if mendacious, character some real oomph. We see the earlier part of the story via copious voice-over largely from Barbara's point of view, but then find there's a lot she hasn't told us. It's not that her goal is reprehensible all she wants really is companionship it's that she is so ruthless in pursuing it.
As her target Sheba, Cate Blanchette is equally effective. Her real achievement is in portraying Sheba, the beautiful daughter of a famous economist, as rather a week character, irresolute, caught up in her emotions, a perfect foil for Barbara's steely determination. It is not without significance that it's Steven, her schoolboy lover, who initiates the relationship. She can't stop herself.
Bill Nighy, that expert at shifty characters, plays Sheba's older husband straight, and is very effective. Andrew Simpson as Steven is also very good. There is also a gem of a performance from Michael Maloney as the headmaster, an arch bureaucrat and devotee of political correctness. Phil Davis is also very good in a small part as Brian, another one of Sheba's admirers.
I'm afraid I have a complaint about the music. Phillip Glass is justly famous as a modern music composer. He is often billed as the last of the romantics. But here the score is intrusive, noisy and overdone undoing by overstatement the understated acting on the screen. This was a play, not an opera, and the music was just too much.
The familiar shots of London (from Parliament Hill?) which bookend this film have been showing up a lot in British movies lately. Here everything is shrouded in fog. But there is no ambiguity about this story. The ending is apparently different from Zoe Heller's original novel, but hardly comes as a surprise. What is interesting is what a common story student-teacher sex is. Check out the message board postings on this site. And most of it remains undetected.
The Real, As Opposed to the Convenient
jzappa15 January 2007
This is a story told through the proper subjective medium, film, with such painful, cynical candor for how Barbara has spent a life disabusing herself of any rose-tinted notion of life or people. The price? Absolute, utter loneliness. The dynamic human images we see our narrated by the day-by-day items in the diary she zealously keeps as a sanctuary, and an affirmation. The movie fixes on acts of indiscretion and disloyalty, entailing not just our scathingly wise narrator and her new teaching colleague Sheba, but Sheba's husband, the headmaster, a teacher infatuated with Sheba, and a 15-year-old student. Each believes their reasons are sincere, but are all entrenched in variations of self-deception. As Barbara says, in one of the most tellingly human things I've ever heard in a movie, "It takes courage to recognize the real as opposed to the convenient."
Dench and Blanchett, as Barbara and Sheba, share not only a gift for deep behavioral detail but a skill at withholding or telegraphing charm and beauty, as required. This may be one of the numerous reasons why they're as compelling as they are. It's definitely part of why this is some of their finest work. It's part of the drama's mechanism. Were Sheba not the breed of beauty she is, a naive, impressionable, coddled pixie, then we couldn't appreciate how intensely Barbara wants her. It's not exactly love so much as controlling, envious fixation on Sheba's stunning upper-class ease. And were Barbara not a teakettle of seclusion boiling through decades of disillusionment, we couldn't identify with how distorted the manifestation of that affection becomes.
That's the marvel of the movie: It's about the venomous influence of loneliness, viewed through a tale of two people in love. But unfortunately for both, not with one another. Sheba becomes smitten with a cute but cagey student. Played with what seems like natural hyper-confidence by Andrew Simpson, he sees an occasion in the way she looks at him. She has no clue of how defenseless she truly is. It's not only dishonest and unethical, she tells herself, it's totally ludicrous, but when he cups her face and says, "You're beautiful, Miss," she melts.
Barbara, meanwhile, fosters an obsession in her diary, relating thoughts precariously bordering on fantasy. Barbara's seclusion within the school is total, but Sheba is somebody who hasn't experienced her acidity. Barbara can smother someone with good turns and not be rejected. She helps Sheba win control of her students. "One soon learns that teaching is crowd control. We're a branch of social services." Sheba asks her to Sunday roast, where Barbara describes Sheba's family with characteristically rancorous humor. Dench's delivery of these delectably spiteful lines is an triumph in vocal meticulousness and tone that is its own prize. Even when this apparent ice queen drops minute words of vulnerability like "Is that why she hasn't returned my calls?" there's an extra intensity in how strongly we can all relate to the insecurities of her inner voice.
There are giftedly handled, extraordinarily candid scenes of rage, humiliation and disgrace, and cruel physical and emotional clashes of immense force. The teachers are somewhat caricatured, but that's because they're filtered through Barbara's misanthropic viewpoint. If it's her omniscient voice we're hearing, it's through her omniscient eyes we're seeing what she describes, and it's the figures who allow her access to their humanity who have profundity and delicacy in their depictions. A wholly earnest Dench brings to Barbara that frigid reserve that's somehow one with a despairing need for consolation and affection. Early on, Sheba is basically an alluring figurine, watched from afar. When our voyeuristic chronicler discovers Sheba's business with the student, Sheba grows immense dimension.
We start to see Sheba's own manner of advantaged lonesomeness or just tedium. "Marriage, kids, it's wonderful," she presumingly explains, "but it doesn't give you meaning." Blanchett brilliantly uses her character's advantages to betray her. The grim lesson she's about to learn from Barbara seems belated, even valuable. People like Sheba, according to Barbara, and I'm sure you'll agree, think they know loneliness, but they know nothing of planning one's whole weekend around a laundry errand, or being so continually untouched that the inadvertent sweep of a stranger's hand ignites years of sexual longing.
What I adore about the film is this discerningly intricate moral kaleidoscope weaved in completely modern domestic terms. It's going on in your neighborhood, not just Islington. There are scandals like this every year, and we dismissively conjecture from what little we gather. The cunning concept here is that we're seeing it through the sieve of Barbara, and whose transgressions transcend contemporary know-it-all assumptions.
Dench and Blanchett, as Barbara and Sheba, share not only a gift for deep behavioral detail but a skill at withholding or telegraphing charm and beauty, as required. This may be one of the numerous reasons why they're as compelling as they are. It's definitely part of why this is some of their finest work. It's part of the drama's mechanism. Were Sheba not the breed of beauty she is, a naive, impressionable, coddled pixie, then we couldn't appreciate how intensely Barbara wants her. It's not exactly love so much as controlling, envious fixation on Sheba's stunning upper-class ease. And were Barbara not a teakettle of seclusion boiling through decades of disillusionment, we couldn't identify with how distorted the manifestation of that affection becomes.
That's the marvel of the movie: It's about the venomous influence of loneliness, viewed through a tale of two people in love. But unfortunately for both, not with one another. Sheba becomes smitten with a cute but cagey student. Played with what seems like natural hyper-confidence by Andrew Simpson, he sees an occasion in the way she looks at him. She has no clue of how defenseless she truly is. It's not only dishonest and unethical, she tells herself, it's totally ludicrous, but when he cups her face and says, "You're beautiful, Miss," she melts.
Barbara, meanwhile, fosters an obsession in her diary, relating thoughts precariously bordering on fantasy. Barbara's seclusion within the school is total, but Sheba is somebody who hasn't experienced her acidity. Barbara can smother someone with good turns and not be rejected. She helps Sheba win control of her students. "One soon learns that teaching is crowd control. We're a branch of social services." Sheba asks her to Sunday roast, where Barbara describes Sheba's family with characteristically rancorous humor. Dench's delivery of these delectably spiteful lines is an triumph in vocal meticulousness and tone that is its own prize. Even when this apparent ice queen drops minute words of vulnerability like "Is that why she hasn't returned my calls?" there's an extra intensity in how strongly we can all relate to the insecurities of her inner voice.
There are giftedly handled, extraordinarily candid scenes of rage, humiliation and disgrace, and cruel physical and emotional clashes of immense force. The teachers are somewhat caricatured, but that's because they're filtered through Barbara's misanthropic viewpoint. If it's her omniscient voice we're hearing, it's through her omniscient eyes we're seeing what she describes, and it's the figures who allow her access to their humanity who have profundity and delicacy in their depictions. A wholly earnest Dench brings to Barbara that frigid reserve that's somehow one with a despairing need for consolation and affection. Early on, Sheba is basically an alluring figurine, watched from afar. When our voyeuristic chronicler discovers Sheba's business with the student, Sheba grows immense dimension.
We start to see Sheba's own manner of advantaged lonesomeness or just tedium. "Marriage, kids, it's wonderful," she presumingly explains, "but it doesn't give you meaning." Blanchett brilliantly uses her character's advantages to betray her. The grim lesson she's about to learn from Barbara seems belated, even valuable. People like Sheba, according to Barbara, and I'm sure you'll agree, think they know loneliness, but they know nothing of planning one's whole weekend around a laundry errand, or being so continually untouched that the inadvertent sweep of a stranger's hand ignites years of sexual longing.
What I adore about the film is this discerningly intricate moral kaleidoscope weaved in completely modern domestic terms. It's going on in your neighborhood, not just Islington. There are scandals like this every year, and we dismissively conjecture from what little we gather. The cunning concept here is that we're seeing it through the sieve of Barbara, and whose transgressions transcend contemporary know-it-all assumptions.
Good, but doesn't delve deep enough
anthonyjlangford29 April 2009
Judi Dench heads up a strong cast as Barbara Covett, a Secondary school teacher seeing out her final year in the job, when a younger attractive art teacher Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett) arrives and turns her somewhat small world on its head.
Sheba's gaining attention from all quarters but at least its adding some zeal to her otherwise dull bourgeois existence. Unfortunately some of it is coming from fifteen year old Steven Connolly (Andrew Simpson) and she can't or won't say no. Barbara is never far away and makes an unpleasant discovery. She soon realizes that this could be an opportunity, if she is prepared to make it as one. Both women are unstable and their union is destined to be a disastrous one.
Patrick Marber (Closer) wrote the screenplay based upon Zoe Heller's novel. Marber writes exquisitely amusing dialog and Judi Dench gets all the best lines. She dominates every scene she is in. Cate Blanchett is competent too and is always a pleasure to watch, though she has been better.
The real problem lies in the story. While it's meaty enough for a novel, there isn't enough going on for a screenplay. It doesn't go far enough and barely limps out to 90 minutes. We cannot help but feel that we may have been slightly cheated. A sub-plot is missing and more depth from some of the other characters. Bill Nighy, for example, is brilliant when he's around but we don't see him enough. Same goes for headmaster Sandy (Michael Maloney). All has been put to one side so the stars can carry on with the theatrics. He's getting there, but Marber is yet to step out of the theater and embrace film. Closer, in point, belonged on the stage.
This is still a worthwhile film with some standout performances by some of the best actors working today. There's also a brilliant score from the ever remarkable Phillip Glass (The Hours, Koyaanisqatsi). You'll recognize his signature tunes from the first note.
What we have here is good, but it doesn't delve deep enough. We're left feeling a little empty. It's like the main course without the side dishes.
Sheba's gaining attention from all quarters but at least its adding some zeal to her otherwise dull bourgeois existence. Unfortunately some of it is coming from fifteen year old Steven Connolly (Andrew Simpson) and she can't or won't say no. Barbara is never far away and makes an unpleasant discovery. She soon realizes that this could be an opportunity, if she is prepared to make it as one. Both women are unstable and their union is destined to be a disastrous one.
Patrick Marber (Closer) wrote the screenplay based upon Zoe Heller's novel. Marber writes exquisitely amusing dialog and Judi Dench gets all the best lines. She dominates every scene she is in. Cate Blanchett is competent too and is always a pleasure to watch, though she has been better.
The real problem lies in the story. While it's meaty enough for a novel, there isn't enough going on for a screenplay. It doesn't go far enough and barely limps out to 90 minutes. We cannot help but feel that we may have been slightly cheated. A sub-plot is missing and more depth from some of the other characters. Bill Nighy, for example, is brilliant when he's around but we don't see him enough. Same goes for headmaster Sandy (Michael Maloney). All has been put to one side so the stars can carry on with the theatrics. He's getting there, but Marber is yet to step out of the theater and embrace film. Closer, in point, belonged on the stage.
This is still a worthwhile film with some standout performances by some of the best actors working today. There's also a brilliant score from the ever remarkable Phillip Glass (The Hours, Koyaanisqatsi). You'll recognize his signature tunes from the first note.
What we have here is good, but it doesn't delve deep enough. We're left feeling a little empty. It's like the main course without the side dishes.
Brill, Dark, Witty....and "Marvelously Judi Dench/Cate Blanchett"
screenwriter-1427 December 2006
NOTES ON A SCANDAL is a Judi Dench "triumph" of brilliant wit, pain and a satanic passion for a woman out of reach in Cate Blanchett. Her "Judas" to her supposed friend and fellow teacher is an acting performance which will land Ms. Dench right back in "Oscar country". Too bad it is in the same year as Helen Mirren's magnificent "Queen" as Dench gives a show here in NOTES ON A SCANDAL that leaves you quite breathless to the last and final scene and fade out.
Patrick Marber delivers a deliciously wicked, witty and crisply written script in NOTES, and it only enhances his reputation for giving an audience a story well developed and with characters that you can't take your eyes off on the screen. His writing in CLOSER was so brilliant and clever, but in NOTES ON A SCANDAL he hands Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett words that are zingers and with a strong blend of anger, pain and humor. Please, Patrick, gives us another film quickly! The "teacher/student" romance was well developed and the chemistry between the two actors was believable and very sexual, and one could understand the youthful passion delivered by a young man with a strong mind and body. I did at times have to listen carefully to the young actor's lines, but he delivered them like a pro.
In the weeks ahead, I anticipate a "roar from the crowd" for this very dark and witty Judi Dench performance and who knows, she may upset "The Crown" in the end come Oscar time.
Patrick Marber delivers a deliciously wicked, witty and crisply written script in NOTES, and it only enhances his reputation for giving an audience a story well developed and with characters that you can't take your eyes off on the screen. His writing in CLOSER was so brilliant and clever, but in NOTES ON A SCANDAL he hands Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett words that are zingers and with a strong blend of anger, pain and humor. Please, Patrick, gives us another film quickly! The "teacher/student" romance was well developed and the chemistry between the two actors was believable and very sexual, and one could understand the youthful passion delivered by a young man with a strong mind and body. I did at times have to listen carefully to the young actor's lines, but he delivered them like a pro.
In the weeks ahead, I anticipate a "roar from the crowd" for this very dark and witty Judi Dench performance and who knows, she may upset "The Crown" in the end come Oscar time.
Rarely is a film so sublime!
wisewebwoman5 January 2007
Every film should aspire to be as satisfying as this one is - on every level, and there are so many layers to it all. Nothing is as it appears and the film unwinds in the form of comments and voice-overs from the many journals of the protagonist.
Judi Dench, yet again, sinks her teeth into the part of Barbara Covett, a cynical and acerbic history teacher putting in time in an inner city school.
Enter Cate Blanchett, playing Sheba Hart, the new art teacher, fragile, naive, innocent and hopeful. Or is she? Barbara quickly ensconces herself into Sheba's life, becoming confidante and friend.
And then the plot thickens and assumes the intensity of a thriller as Sheba's life starts to fall apart, secretly abetted by Barbara. The tension does not let up until the very last frame and the viewer is never quite sure where this ride is going.
Sheba and Barbara are very alike at their cores, there is a fragile 'fatal attraction' theme running through their relationship, shadowed by Sheba's impossible affair with a fifteen year old boy which is in turn shadowed by her Down's Syndrome son who is of an age with her student, and again this is shadowed by her daughter's coming of age love troubles and overall the shadow of her own marriage to a much older man, who left his wife and children for her teenage self. I found all of these themes winding again and again throughout the film. The characters are fully rounded and indeed are also shown happy in the bosoms of their individual families but with a distance portrayed as if they are never quite sure of their places within them - always a distraction and secrets.
Barbara has her shadows too and they start to trickle through and become more vocalized and by others, as the stories unfold.
Enough said without spoilers. Bill Nighy, as Sheba's husband ably enhances the two astonishing performances of the female leads.
Movie making at its finest. This is being shown in two theatres in the same complex where I saw it and both were packed. It is very heartening to see a character driven and challenging movie being so popular.
10 out of 10. Superlative, down to the music by Philip Glass.
Judi Dench, yet again, sinks her teeth into the part of Barbara Covett, a cynical and acerbic history teacher putting in time in an inner city school.
Enter Cate Blanchett, playing Sheba Hart, the new art teacher, fragile, naive, innocent and hopeful. Or is she? Barbara quickly ensconces herself into Sheba's life, becoming confidante and friend.
And then the plot thickens and assumes the intensity of a thriller as Sheba's life starts to fall apart, secretly abetted by Barbara. The tension does not let up until the very last frame and the viewer is never quite sure where this ride is going.
Sheba and Barbara are very alike at their cores, there is a fragile 'fatal attraction' theme running through their relationship, shadowed by Sheba's impossible affair with a fifteen year old boy which is in turn shadowed by her Down's Syndrome son who is of an age with her student, and again this is shadowed by her daughter's coming of age love troubles and overall the shadow of her own marriage to a much older man, who left his wife and children for her teenage self. I found all of these themes winding again and again throughout the film. The characters are fully rounded and indeed are also shown happy in the bosoms of their individual families but with a distance portrayed as if they are never quite sure of their places within them - always a distraction and secrets.
Barbara has her shadows too and they start to trickle through and become more vocalized and by others, as the stories unfold.
Enough said without spoilers. Bill Nighy, as Sheba's husband ably enhances the two astonishing performances of the female leads.
Movie making at its finest. This is being shown in two theatres in the same complex where I saw it and both were packed. It is very heartening to see a character driven and challenging movie being so popular.
10 out of 10. Superlative, down to the music by Philip Glass.
Brilliant acting
Gordon-1115 July 2007
This film is about a teacher having sex with a 15 year old schoolboy, with drastic consequences.
The acting in this film is absolutely amazing. Cate Blanchett does very well as a lost and lonely woman, trapped in a less than satisfying marriage and the burden to care for a son with Down Syndrome. Her emotions are heartfelt and real, especially after she finds out the candid intentions of Judi Dench. Judi Dench on the other hand, plays a cunning woman with an unusual interest in Cate Blanchett. Her smile and looks are cunning in pivotal scenes. The scene where Judi Dench reaches out her hand over Cate Blanchett conveys a lot of unsaid undercurrents between the two characters. The plot itself is dramatic and gripping as well. This film should have won more Oscars!
The acting in this film is absolutely amazing. Cate Blanchett does very well as a lost and lonely woman, trapped in a less than satisfying marriage and the burden to care for a son with Down Syndrome. Her emotions are heartfelt and real, especially after she finds out the candid intentions of Judi Dench. Judi Dench on the other hand, plays a cunning woman with an unusual interest in Cate Blanchett. Her smile and looks are cunning in pivotal scenes. The scene where Judi Dench reaches out her hand over Cate Blanchett conveys a lot of unsaid undercurrents between the two characters. The plot itself is dramatic and gripping as well. This film should have won more Oscars!
Even better than the book
julianjessop5 January 2007
I saw this at a preview last night. It is a brilliant, absorbing little piece from Zoe Heller's novel about a teacher (Cate Blanchett, looking stunning) who has an affair with a 15 year old pupil and the effect this has on her relationship with a bitter, older teacher seeking selfishly for love (Judy Dench, looking 100). Great performances all round, with special mention to Bill Nighy in the Bill Nighy role. The script (Patrick Marber) is faithful to the book but enjoyable though the book was the film is actually - for a change - even better. Beautifully filmed in North London and Eastbourne (presumably the school scenes) this movie is definitely a must see.
Too short and contrived to really make the list
n-mo30 March 2008
"Notes on a Scandal" seeks to transform what was apparently a singular epistolary journal-novel (which I have not read) into a multidimensional theatrical masterpiece. And well-crafted indeed is this little psycho-sexual thriller. Regrettably, by the end, digesting the substance is akin to the sensation biting into a long, juicy red steak, only to discover that a couple of millimeters down lies an inedible and unsatisfying web of sinewy cartilage and bone.
Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett are indeed fabulous, although it is hard to imagine either of them being anything less. In spite of their loathsome behaviour--Dench's subversive lesbian seductions and Blanchett's pædophilia--they manage to inject enough humour and charm into their roles to become multifaceted and complex characters. Blanchett's could easily have been nothing more than a whiny, malcontented upper-middle-class shrew, but her naïve, self-conscious flightiness and aesthetic sense are shown to be but manifestations of a longing for true, substantive beauty--and it's easy to identify with her husband, her young lover and her colleague in being enamored of her. (Too easy, actually, given the rather graphic depictions of her affair with Irish lad Steven Connolly).
But it is Judi Dench's character who really stands out. "Notes on a Scandal" attracted a bit of controversy from those who felt its depiction of "repressed lesbianism" wasn't "progressive" enough for the "Gay is Good" times of "Brokeback Mountain." But while arguably a large part of the psychological twist of the film does, indeed, play off of the audience's prejudice against homoeroticism as inherently perverse (not, I confess, a prejudice that offends myself), I would not used "repressed" to describe Dench's character; "closeted" would be more accurate. She is perfectly self-aware of her desires, and she does not seem at all troubled at the inherent conflict between indulging them and nurturing her steadfastly conservative worldview. She seems to fervently believe in the latter. Her character is truly enigmatic, and captivating: it is quite easy to see how Blanchett's could have been so drawn in to her world and missed--or willfully denied--the signs of where this road was really headed.
Regrettably, however, once the film has had enough of exploring these two characters, it abruptly cuts itself off with a climax that turns on a rather incredulous and sloppy premise completely contradictory to Dench's prior development. If Blanchett and Dench really had been fleshed out to the max--which I'm not exactly sure of--why not spend a bit more time exploring Connelly, his family, Blanchett's husband, perhaps? But granting this one major misstep, the ending that follows is "logical," so to say, though hardly satisfactory. We were given the impression that the film set itself up for a deeper or more psychological reading and we are sorely disappointed. "Notes on a Scandal" is a good non-date thriller for those who will not be mind-warped by rather intense depictions of cradle-robbing, but it cannot make the list of "Great Cinema."
Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett are indeed fabulous, although it is hard to imagine either of them being anything less. In spite of their loathsome behaviour--Dench's subversive lesbian seductions and Blanchett's pædophilia--they manage to inject enough humour and charm into their roles to become multifaceted and complex characters. Blanchett's could easily have been nothing more than a whiny, malcontented upper-middle-class shrew, but her naïve, self-conscious flightiness and aesthetic sense are shown to be but manifestations of a longing for true, substantive beauty--and it's easy to identify with her husband, her young lover and her colleague in being enamored of her. (Too easy, actually, given the rather graphic depictions of her affair with Irish lad Steven Connolly).
But it is Judi Dench's character who really stands out. "Notes on a Scandal" attracted a bit of controversy from those who felt its depiction of "repressed lesbianism" wasn't "progressive" enough for the "Gay is Good" times of "Brokeback Mountain." But while arguably a large part of the psychological twist of the film does, indeed, play off of the audience's prejudice against homoeroticism as inherently perverse (not, I confess, a prejudice that offends myself), I would not used "repressed" to describe Dench's character; "closeted" would be more accurate. She is perfectly self-aware of her desires, and she does not seem at all troubled at the inherent conflict between indulging them and nurturing her steadfastly conservative worldview. She seems to fervently believe in the latter. Her character is truly enigmatic, and captivating: it is quite easy to see how Blanchett's could have been so drawn in to her world and missed--or willfully denied--the signs of where this road was really headed.
Regrettably, however, once the film has had enough of exploring these two characters, it abruptly cuts itself off with a climax that turns on a rather incredulous and sloppy premise completely contradictory to Dench's prior development. If Blanchett and Dench really had been fleshed out to the max--which I'm not exactly sure of--why not spend a bit more time exploring Connelly, his family, Blanchett's husband, perhaps? But granting this one major misstep, the ending that follows is "logical," so to say, though hardly satisfactory. We were given the impression that the film set itself up for a deeper or more psychological reading and we are sorely disappointed. "Notes on a Scandal" is a good non-date thriller for those who will not be mind-warped by rather intense depictions of cradle-robbing, but it cannot make the list of "Great Cinema."
The Brits and an Aussie outdo US with "Notes on a Scandal"
EPDirector30 December 2006
Without a doubt this year's Academy Awards will be a show to watch. You may want to turn the spot lights to the "BEST ACTRESS IN LEADING ROLE" nomination, because if you saw "The Queen" and loved Helen Mirren, you ain't seen nothing' yet. Go watch "Notes on a Scandal" with Dame Judi Dench at helm, and make sure to bring your casket with you, because you may die of watching a movie that good.
Years ago I went to see a play in a theater. At some point in the show, the grandmother character had to sweep the floor and when she was done, she looked around to make sure nobody was looking and threw the dirt under the carpet. Everyone in the audience laughed. Later I learned that in theater "language" it also may mean that there are hidden secrets in that family.
The director Richard Eyre,who is known mostly for his theater/Broadway work, seems to build this amazing film based on that little theater shtick, and fills the film with the darkness under the carpet, puts us right there and makes us face that dirt. The characters of the young teacher played by Cate Blanchett and older teacher played by M. Judi Dench are impeccable and you can't take your eyes off them. I, personally, think that Dench's performance is one of the finest I have ever seen.
I wouldn't want to spoil the movie for you and give out details, however if you are looking for watching a powerful drama that will shock and thrill and move you with its message, execution and the story, please read no further. Stand up, get dressed and go to see "Notes on a Scandal" right now.
9/10
Years ago I went to see a play in a theater. At some point in the show, the grandmother character had to sweep the floor and when she was done, she looked around to make sure nobody was looking and threw the dirt under the carpet. Everyone in the audience laughed. Later I learned that in theater "language" it also may mean that there are hidden secrets in that family.
The director Richard Eyre,who is known mostly for his theater/Broadway work, seems to build this amazing film based on that little theater shtick, and fills the film with the darkness under the carpet, puts us right there and makes us face that dirt. The characters of the young teacher played by Cate Blanchett and older teacher played by M. Judi Dench are impeccable and you can't take your eyes off them. I, personally, think that Dench's performance is one of the finest I have ever seen.
I wouldn't want to spoil the movie for you and give out details, however if you are looking for watching a powerful drama that will shock and thrill and move you with its message, execution and the story, please read no further. Stand up, get dressed and go to see "Notes on a Scandal" right now.
9/10
The dumb and the damned
gyges0320 January 2007
Crisp dialogue and virtuoso performances make this film enjoyable but it leaves one with a sort of cinematic indigestion. Perhaps it is the atmosphere of cynical mean-spiritedness that ruins so much contemporary British art -as though truth were nasty, a bitter medicine that had to be taken for one's own good. While Judi Dench has a romp with the part of the repressed, evil Barbara Covett. Cate Blanchett's Sheba Hart is so underwritten that her character doesn't stand a chance. When the story starts to liven up every character morphs into an embarrassing pantomime stereotype. The Philip Glass score sounds as if it had been waiting for years in his deep freeze to be used, it is too loud and has nothing to do with the film. Too bad, there is a lot of great talent involved here and ultimately it all seems wasted.
One of the unjustly overlooked movies of 2006.
Boba_Fett11383 October 2007
This is perhaps one of the most overlooked movies of 2006. Sure, it got lots of good critical acclaim and it was even nominated for 4 Oscar's but not that many people actually went to see this movie in theaters. I'll admit that Judi Dench as an old lesbian doesn't sound like the most appealing movie but of course when you still give the movie a chance the movie and its story have much more to offer.
It's not necessarily one of the best or most clever written movies of the past years but the execution of it all is just top-class. It's a quite unusual and also daring story, mainly because of its perspective and characters. It therefor at all times remain a good and interesting movie to keep your attention and interest throughout.
But of course what really makes this movie is the Judi Dench character. She knows how to bend and manipulate the situation to her own advantage, only purely for her own personal gain and pleasure. It's a real disturbed character and definitely has some issues but in the movie she isn't portrayed as an insane psycho who would do anything to get what she wants, even though that still is what the story is all about. It's thanks to Judi Dench that the character still always keeps an humane side and a side that you could understand and perhaps even care for. It's a real great character for Dench to add to her impressive list of characters. This is perhaps her most villainous role out of her career. Her character begins as a quite normal one, that you even start to care for, but slowly and steadily it becomes obvious throughout the movie that this is one disturbed character. I also like how its only implied throughout the movie that the Judi Dench character is lesbian. The word is never said and nobody speaks of it. I don't know, just thought that this was a nice touch. Just let the viewers make all of the obvious assumptions without explaining everything formulaic and in simple movie telling form.
Also of course the make-up helps a lot. Judi Dench really looks like an ugly old woman in the movie, though in real life she is still good looking for her age.
Cate Blanchett also plays a good role. This must have been a tough role for her but she manages very well at keeping her character humane and more easy to identify with as well. Bill Nighy once more also plays a great and subtle role. His role was sort of restrained in the movie, which really was needed for the story and to not distract from the movie its main issues. I also liked how they used 'non-actor' looking and acting persons for the teachers roles. I found the atmosphere among- and the looks of the teachers very convincing in the movie. I've actually spend lots of time in the teachers room, so I know what I'm talking about. No, I spend there not as a punishment but as work, not that there's much difference though.
The movie does a very good job at creating a realistic and easy to identify with atmosphere and situations, even despite the tough and unusual subjects. It does this trough the dialog and acting but also with the help of the fine directing and story-telling, despite some flaws in it, that creates the atmosphere of the movie. It's the sort of movie that looks and feels like it all could really happen and why not to any of you? The movie feels as if it's based on a true story, even though it's not. It's based on the novel "What Was She Thinking: Notes on a Scandal" by Zoe Heller.
I also liked the Philip Glass musical score for the movie. I'm not really a Philip Glass fan in terms of that I ever sit down and listen to his scores but his scores always suit the movies and its atmosphere well. I think that's also the reason why he already has been nominated for 3 Oscar's, including for this movie.
A great movie!
9/10
http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/
It's not necessarily one of the best or most clever written movies of the past years but the execution of it all is just top-class. It's a quite unusual and also daring story, mainly because of its perspective and characters. It therefor at all times remain a good and interesting movie to keep your attention and interest throughout.
But of course what really makes this movie is the Judi Dench character. She knows how to bend and manipulate the situation to her own advantage, only purely for her own personal gain and pleasure. It's a real disturbed character and definitely has some issues but in the movie she isn't portrayed as an insane psycho who would do anything to get what she wants, even though that still is what the story is all about. It's thanks to Judi Dench that the character still always keeps an humane side and a side that you could understand and perhaps even care for. It's a real great character for Dench to add to her impressive list of characters. This is perhaps her most villainous role out of her career. Her character begins as a quite normal one, that you even start to care for, but slowly and steadily it becomes obvious throughout the movie that this is one disturbed character. I also like how its only implied throughout the movie that the Judi Dench character is lesbian. The word is never said and nobody speaks of it. I don't know, just thought that this was a nice touch. Just let the viewers make all of the obvious assumptions without explaining everything formulaic and in simple movie telling form.
Also of course the make-up helps a lot. Judi Dench really looks like an ugly old woman in the movie, though in real life she is still good looking for her age.
Cate Blanchett also plays a good role. This must have been a tough role for her but she manages very well at keeping her character humane and more easy to identify with as well. Bill Nighy once more also plays a great and subtle role. His role was sort of restrained in the movie, which really was needed for the story and to not distract from the movie its main issues. I also liked how they used 'non-actor' looking and acting persons for the teachers roles. I found the atmosphere among- and the looks of the teachers very convincing in the movie. I've actually spend lots of time in the teachers room, so I know what I'm talking about. No, I spend there not as a punishment but as work, not that there's much difference though.
The movie does a very good job at creating a realistic and easy to identify with atmosphere and situations, even despite the tough and unusual subjects. It does this trough the dialog and acting but also with the help of the fine directing and story-telling, despite some flaws in it, that creates the atmosphere of the movie. It's the sort of movie that looks and feels like it all could really happen and why not to any of you? The movie feels as if it's based on a true story, even though it's not. It's based on the novel "What Was She Thinking: Notes on a Scandal" by Zoe Heller.
I also liked the Philip Glass musical score for the movie. I'm not really a Philip Glass fan in terms of that I ever sit down and listen to his scores but his scores always suit the movies and its atmosphere well. I think that's also the reason why he already has been nominated for 3 Oscar's, including for this movie.
A great movie!
9/10
http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/
Langrish Comes Out
tedg13 February 2007
In previous comments, I have railed about Judi Dench, how she tries to bend the environment of the project to suit what she wants to do. Instead of understanding the requirements of the narrative and supporting it and every worthwhile project will have some special notions here she just plows ahead. Its perhaps a side effect of that quaint but repellent system of English titles. If you somehow comport yourself to fit the national story, you get a title and everyone henceforth provides a verbal curtsy.
Its tolerable enough in faux aristocratic bankers, and even non-actor celebrities. But actors are different members of society than anyone else. When they reach a level of familiarity, they can if they choose, form part of the story that we might choose to join. So I have been upset that Dench ruins movies because she is filling the role not required by the movie, but by an anachronistic class system.
And my most discouraging experience was with this very same director. She shared a role with Kate Winslet, Kate the young and Judi the old version. The whole point of the thing was how each was nested or could be in the other. Kate is fully capable of this; why she was chosen, but she has no partner. The thing was a disaster.
But here, Dench surprises. Perhaps it is because she actually appears together with her collaborator, someone every bit as capable as Kate. And the setup here is simpler: these are complements of each other, not versions of the same being. It works, at least so far as what the actors can do, and for that I am thankful.
The film as a whole fails, despite what we have in terms of the way the actors place themselves with each other. It fails because the director doesn't know how to allow them to place themselves in relation to us. I invite the reader to view a project that has Dench, is constructed the same way, but works. Its called "Langrish Goes Down." It also has a narrative wrapper in a diary of sorts, but there the diary (actually letters to no one) takes on its own agency and you have no idea how much of what you see is imagined or not. Dench there is perfect, just a miracle, and the film does what it is supposed to it makes us unsettled in what we maintain as love outside.
Here, all you can do is allow the narrative and diary to be set up off to the side, not as our world, but as a sort of prop to let us know that this woman is a predator. Also it appears at the end as a plot device. Sure, there are some flashy moments. Sure we get to see Cate, and there is some resonance in having her energy wasted in playing a character whose energy is wasted. But except for the fact that we get to see Dench actually try, its a waste.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
Its tolerable enough in faux aristocratic bankers, and even non-actor celebrities. But actors are different members of society than anyone else. When they reach a level of familiarity, they can if they choose, form part of the story that we might choose to join. So I have been upset that Dench ruins movies because she is filling the role not required by the movie, but by an anachronistic class system.
And my most discouraging experience was with this very same director. She shared a role with Kate Winslet, Kate the young and Judi the old version. The whole point of the thing was how each was nested or could be in the other. Kate is fully capable of this; why she was chosen, but she has no partner. The thing was a disaster.
But here, Dench surprises. Perhaps it is because she actually appears together with her collaborator, someone every bit as capable as Kate. And the setup here is simpler: these are complements of each other, not versions of the same being. It works, at least so far as what the actors can do, and for that I am thankful.
The film as a whole fails, despite what we have in terms of the way the actors place themselves with each other. It fails because the director doesn't know how to allow them to place themselves in relation to us. I invite the reader to view a project that has Dench, is constructed the same way, but works. Its called "Langrish Goes Down." It also has a narrative wrapper in a diary of sorts, but there the diary (actually letters to no one) takes on its own agency and you have no idea how much of what you see is imagined or not. Dench there is perfect, just a miracle, and the film does what it is supposed to it makes us unsettled in what we maintain as love outside.
Here, all you can do is allow the narrative and diary to be set up off to the side, not as our world, but as a sort of prop to let us know that this woman is a predator. Also it appears at the end as a plot device. Sure, there are some flashy moments. Sure we get to see Cate, and there is some resonance in having her energy wasted in playing a character whose energy is wasted. But except for the fact that we get to see Dench actually try, its a waste.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
Enjoyable but over rated
spiderstumbled1 February 2007
Kate Blanchett and Judi Dench are two of my favorite actresses. I've been a fan of Judy since finding "As Time Goes By" reruns on PBS and of Cate since "Oscar and Lucinda". So I was jazzed to see this movie ever since seeing the preview a month or so ago. Most of the story was well-written and the leading ladies were stell as they always are. If you're a fan of British cinema over the last 10 years you will enjoy seeing some familiar faces from other quality films. But there are two major flaws for me. I never quite bought the attraction of Cate to the young boy. He had the right look but he seemed too shallow and uninteresting to actually catch the eye of someone as fetching as Cate. And lastly I came away from the film feeling much more sympathy for Judy's old scold than Cate's spoiled destructive brat. I'm going to fish around the comments and see if anyone agrees with me on that last point but I suspect not.
"Notes On a Scandal": Judi Dench as Bloodsucking Fiend.
Jallipoli4 January 2007
A little-known fact about Araneae Arachidna, uncommonly known as the common spider: Only their nimble poise keeps them from tumbling into their webs. The slightest slip, the merest topple, and they'd be in as wretched a condition as the bloodless husks that litter their tacky lairs. In "Notes On a Scandal," (which enjoyed a limited release on Dec. 25), this delicate mean is most graphically illustrated in London schoolmarm, Barbara Covett (note the last name), whose rule in the classroom is adamantine, but whose grasp of words like "friend," "secret" and "love affair" are as tenuous as spider silk.
Dame Judi Dench's Covett is a history teacher in a British school that makes the one in "Saint Clara" look like an accounting firm made over by the Body Snatchers. Vicious football hooligans and wanton almost-women abound, "the future plumbers and shop clerks," in Covett's acid baroque. The teachers crouch in the gymnatorium, trading term reports, like beleaguered generals in the trenches. Covett's is the most succinct: Her classes are "below the National Average, but above the level of catastrophe. Recommendation: No change necessary." But no matter how we try to keep things status quo, change has a way of sluicing in through the cracks. At the start of the Fall term, change waltzes into Dench's life in the liquid form of new art teacher, Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett), who is as lovely as an Elf and her namesake together, but as free as a Hobbit, particularly about the loins, which she can't seem to stop airing out around a treacherously-charming 15-year-old, Steven Connolly (Andrew Simpson), who is determined to pluck this Bohemian rose by means artful and sincere.
When Covett catches a sensuous eyeful of the twosome during a Christmas pageant, this starchy spider sees an opportunity to cinch her snare shut. She takes Hart into her confidence, promising not to tell for the sake of Hart, Connolly and the school (not to mention Covett's icy groin). Soon Covett is insinuating herself into the family life of her supple obsession, appearing at every lunch, outing (and inning), like some incestuous mother-in-law. Hart's family consists of a drolly self-amused husband (Bill Nighy), a teenage melancholic daughter (Juno Temple) and a son who suffers from Down's Syndrome (Max Lewis), whom Covett regards as a flimsy gauntlet between her heart and Hart.
When she's not haunting the Harts' steps, like an insufferably-haughty shadow, Covett can be found out at her meticulously-clutter-free abode, adorning her diary with gold stars and musing about everything from lasagna, to the "pubescent proles," to her only true friend in the world: her dying cat, an uncanny doppelganger of Mrs. Norris, Filch's feline in the Harry Potter movies.
Of course, everything falls apart spectacularly in the third act, with everyone's gory doings blared across every tube and telly from Bath to Birmingham. But what's even more amazing is the way everything falls back together in the end. There are the wounds that cleave, yes, and those which sew us back more strongly than ever. These are the darling themes of director Richard Eyre, whose previous pairing with Dench was the Alzheimer's weeper, "Iris". Eyre is a fellow who believes---truly believes---in the all-conquering power of love, not as a Disneyfied platitude, but as an attracting force, binding beyond all reason, even when every particle of logic screams, "Resist!" Love is a jigsaw puzzle. Smash it to bits, the pieces will snap themselves back into place snugger than ever.
"I can't imagine Iris without me, just as I can't imagine myself without Iris!" says John Bayley of his dear heart, and here similar sentiments apply. Even Covett, at the end, finds herself returning to her first love: herself, her solitude in her aloof tower, hurling down snide remarks, like Molotov cocktails. For Eyre, love is a pliant stone; bendable, yes; breakable---never! One of the great charms of "Notes On a Scandal," as with "Iris," is seeing a supremely royal woman behave like an utter slob. In "Iris," we watched the wits of one of the great literary showwomen of our time rust and rot, but oh-so tenderly. Here, we have Dench muttering such crude asides as: "Lasagna doesn't agree with my bowels; I shall eat as little as possible." Another double take-inducing moment has Dench "stroking" Blanchett's arm in ways most titillative. "Did they do this at your other school?" she asks without a wink of shame. The preview crowd I saw this with couldn't stop snorting with disbelief every time Dench opened her mouth, often laughing before she'd even finished her sentences.
Stripping the iron mail away from our social betters, revealing their pink backsides---this is where Eyre is at his best. We see Dench not in silk-strewn palaces, but in settings both earthy and beige---in simple windbreakers and cardigans. Scenes of tension are shot with jittery hand-held cameras, stifling intimacy, and every window pane bears a film of damp moulder.
These bleak backdrops have a way of humanizing Dench, bringing her down to the contradictions coursing under the crust of the mundane. Dench's Covett has a stalker's knack of deconstructing the simplest gestures---a hair drifting onto her lap, the brushing of a hand---as thunderclaps of loving proclamation. When faced with the ugly contraries real humans are composed of, Covett regards them as base treacheries, then tosses people away, like chipped porcelain. She possesses the kind of idealism only a rapist enjoys. Anyone who falls short is cut off, like a gangrenous limb. But witnessing this, we come to realize Covett is her own worst victim. She's doomed to live in a world which falls forever short of her expectations. In other words, she's human. We pity her.
Dame Judi Dench's Covett is a history teacher in a British school that makes the one in "Saint Clara" look like an accounting firm made over by the Body Snatchers. Vicious football hooligans and wanton almost-women abound, "the future plumbers and shop clerks," in Covett's acid baroque. The teachers crouch in the gymnatorium, trading term reports, like beleaguered generals in the trenches. Covett's is the most succinct: Her classes are "below the National Average, but above the level of catastrophe. Recommendation: No change necessary." But no matter how we try to keep things status quo, change has a way of sluicing in through the cracks. At the start of the Fall term, change waltzes into Dench's life in the liquid form of new art teacher, Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett), who is as lovely as an Elf and her namesake together, but as free as a Hobbit, particularly about the loins, which she can't seem to stop airing out around a treacherously-charming 15-year-old, Steven Connolly (Andrew Simpson), who is determined to pluck this Bohemian rose by means artful and sincere.
When Covett catches a sensuous eyeful of the twosome during a Christmas pageant, this starchy spider sees an opportunity to cinch her snare shut. She takes Hart into her confidence, promising not to tell for the sake of Hart, Connolly and the school (not to mention Covett's icy groin). Soon Covett is insinuating herself into the family life of her supple obsession, appearing at every lunch, outing (and inning), like some incestuous mother-in-law. Hart's family consists of a drolly self-amused husband (Bill Nighy), a teenage melancholic daughter (Juno Temple) and a son who suffers from Down's Syndrome (Max Lewis), whom Covett regards as a flimsy gauntlet between her heart and Hart.
When she's not haunting the Harts' steps, like an insufferably-haughty shadow, Covett can be found out at her meticulously-clutter-free abode, adorning her diary with gold stars and musing about everything from lasagna, to the "pubescent proles," to her only true friend in the world: her dying cat, an uncanny doppelganger of Mrs. Norris, Filch's feline in the Harry Potter movies.
Of course, everything falls apart spectacularly in the third act, with everyone's gory doings blared across every tube and telly from Bath to Birmingham. But what's even more amazing is the way everything falls back together in the end. There are the wounds that cleave, yes, and those which sew us back more strongly than ever. These are the darling themes of director Richard Eyre, whose previous pairing with Dench was the Alzheimer's weeper, "Iris". Eyre is a fellow who believes---truly believes---in the all-conquering power of love, not as a Disneyfied platitude, but as an attracting force, binding beyond all reason, even when every particle of logic screams, "Resist!" Love is a jigsaw puzzle. Smash it to bits, the pieces will snap themselves back into place snugger than ever.
"I can't imagine Iris without me, just as I can't imagine myself without Iris!" says John Bayley of his dear heart, and here similar sentiments apply. Even Covett, at the end, finds herself returning to her first love: herself, her solitude in her aloof tower, hurling down snide remarks, like Molotov cocktails. For Eyre, love is a pliant stone; bendable, yes; breakable---never! One of the great charms of "Notes On a Scandal," as with "Iris," is seeing a supremely royal woman behave like an utter slob. In "Iris," we watched the wits of one of the great literary showwomen of our time rust and rot, but oh-so tenderly. Here, we have Dench muttering such crude asides as: "Lasagna doesn't agree with my bowels; I shall eat as little as possible." Another double take-inducing moment has Dench "stroking" Blanchett's arm in ways most titillative. "Did they do this at your other school?" she asks without a wink of shame. The preview crowd I saw this with couldn't stop snorting with disbelief every time Dench opened her mouth, often laughing before she'd even finished her sentences.
Stripping the iron mail away from our social betters, revealing their pink backsides---this is where Eyre is at his best. We see Dench not in silk-strewn palaces, but in settings both earthy and beige---in simple windbreakers and cardigans. Scenes of tension are shot with jittery hand-held cameras, stifling intimacy, and every window pane bears a film of damp moulder.
These bleak backdrops have a way of humanizing Dench, bringing her down to the contradictions coursing under the crust of the mundane. Dench's Covett has a stalker's knack of deconstructing the simplest gestures---a hair drifting onto her lap, the brushing of a hand---as thunderclaps of loving proclamation. When faced with the ugly contraries real humans are composed of, Covett regards them as base treacheries, then tosses people away, like chipped porcelain. She possesses the kind of idealism only a rapist enjoys. Anyone who falls short is cut off, like a gangrenous limb. But witnessing this, we come to realize Covett is her own worst victim. She's doomed to live in a world which falls forever short of her expectations. In other words, she's human. We pity her.
A Gold Star Friend
ferguson-67 January 2007
Greetings again from the darkness. If you have seen the preview, you know exactly what the film is about. Regrettably, I have not read Zoe Heller's novel, which is evidently brilliant in its subtle manipulation. Director Richard Eyre's ("Iris") film adaptation is anything but subtle, but it is still loads of fun ... in a demented kind of way.
One should read or discuss the film as little as possible prior to viewing so as not to lose what little element of surprise exists after the trailer. What you can know is that Dame Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett are pure magic on screen. They remind of a great Bette Davis vs. Joan Crawford battle and that is lofty company indeed! Blanchett wreaks agony and Dench expertly delivers some of the best British stuffy one liners in film history. These two are what take the film from the Lifetime Channel to interesting movie watching. Throw in Bill Nighy's fine support work and you have two hours of entertainment, even though the subject matter is a bit tough to stomach.
Philip Glass' score adds depth and mood and the best advice I can give is to sit back and enjoy the performances. A bit campy at times, I just viewed this as a nice comic relief from the extremely heavy subject matter.
One should read or discuss the film as little as possible prior to viewing so as not to lose what little element of surprise exists after the trailer. What you can know is that Dame Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett are pure magic on screen. They remind of a great Bette Davis vs. Joan Crawford battle and that is lofty company indeed! Blanchett wreaks agony and Dench expertly delivers some of the best British stuffy one liners in film history. These two are what take the film from the Lifetime Channel to interesting movie watching. Throw in Bill Nighy's fine support work and you have two hours of entertainment, even though the subject matter is a bit tough to stomach.
Philip Glass' score adds depth and mood and the best advice I can give is to sit back and enjoy the performances. A bit campy at times, I just viewed this as a nice comic relief from the extremely heavy subject matter.
tense, funny, captivating, and never dull
angelmuze23 January 2007
The most realistic teacher movie that I have ever seen. Yes, the teacher with her student isn't the norm, but the scenes of the faculty meetings were more accurate than Dangerous Minds or most of the pablum teacher films out there. Dame Judi Dench deserves the Oscar for her riveting turn as a curmudgeon teacher. I laughed out loud during the scene where each teacher must turn in their expectations for the upcoming year. Cate Blanchett makes a difficult character sympathetic. This is a great film with superb acting and true pathos. It is about real people who sometimes act out of loneliness and frustration. Even people with good intentions and good morales make poor judgments and they must reap what they sow. Rarely does a film about the ordinary seem so extraordinary.
Good actors but heavy Ick factor
brendastern18 January 2007
I was drawn to Notes on a Scandal by its three stars -- Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett and Bill Nighy -- who are among my favorite actors. There is enough material here for a very good movie. Unfortunately, this is not it. The script borders on the melodramatic, and the performances likewise. I could not get past the fact that it was Judi, Cate and Bill up there, I never really was convinced that any of them had become their characters. Bill Nighy has one fine explosion scene that demonstrates he is capable of parts beyond what he has been playing, but the others seem to be competing for who can be the most dramatic, Judi with her strange, wacko spinster teacher and Cate with her ditsy blonde bombshell.
In addition, let's face it, there is a heavy ick factor to the story and it's difficult to watch, especially if you have children or other young relatives the age of the boy in the story. I had hoped this film would be Oscar worthy but it misses badly, and Notes is going to have trouble finding an audience.
In addition, let's face it, there is a heavy ick factor to the story and it's difficult to watch, especially if you have children or other young relatives the age of the boy in the story. I had hoped this film would be Oscar worthy but it misses badly, and Notes is going to have trouble finding an audience.
An excellent script is topped only by brilliant performances from Dench and Blanchett
DonFishies18 April 2007
Right after I saw the trailer for Notes on a Scandal late last year, I knew it was going to be a good movie. I also knew that Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett were destined for Oscar nominations. Sure enough, the film got rave reviews and the two actresses popped up on the Oscar ballot. Going two for two cannot be a bad thing, but I never got a chance to see the movie until now. And I was very impressed.
The film tells the story of Barbara Covett (Dench), a teacher at a local high school who is melancholic and just about ready to retire. She longs to find someone to love and to love her back. As she enters into the first day of school, she comes across the new art teacher, Sheba Hart (Blanchett), who she becomes attracted to almost instantaneously. But as she gets closer to Hart, she uncovers a rather alarming secret that may prove to be of good use to her.
Yes, by now most people should know which secret I am referring to. But as the explanation unfolds no more than twenty minutes into the film, the after effects of hearing it are still as shocking as before you knew it.
The grim picture of blackmail, deceit and sexual perversion that unfolds during the movie is nothing short of excellent. The story is very well written, and is even better narrated by Dench through her character's diary writing during the film. The bold language conveyed may be a little much to take at first, but it really makes the unnerving experience all the better. Not to mention the fact that such a dark film, the settings and images are pretty gloomy as well. The ruminating score is also very well done, and really makes many of the scenes all the stronger than they already are.
Another significant element to the film is the language mentioned earlier. At once, it is saucy, enigmatic and witty. Listening to these characters talk is like reading poetry. It is well-versed, and almost comes off like a brilliant play (it helps that it was adapted by a playwright). The language is not just higher-up sounding because it is British; it is because the film is deeply indebted to the academics. Yes, this may just be a very around-the-bit way of saying everyone in the film is a snob, but they are not. They are just very polished and intelligent.
The film more than belongs to Dench. She always acts at the most illustrious of levels. But here, she is at her absolutely best, or at least, from what I have ever seen her do. Her scheming and brooding performance as a hell-bent lesbian is simply astonishing. She brings flavour to every scene, and her emotional range is just off the charts. It is very candid in some ways, and a very honest portrayal of someone who just wants to be loved. Her character is really a ticking time bomb. At many moments, she is very restrained and holding back (in a good way mind you). But in others, she really gets going, and more than just blows up. She ignites and lights up the screen in a way that only the older British actresses can. After seeing such a dazzling performance from Helen Mirren in The Queen, and a downright wicked Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, I was not expecting another performance to be more than deserving of an Oscar. But Dench hits this out of the park, and more than deserved her nomination.
Much the same goes for Blanchett. Although she brought all that she could to Babel, you had to know that she was being very withdrawn from her usual level of intensity. But that is all brought back for her performance here. While she is not nearly as incendiary as Dench, she holds her own and pulls off a hell of a performance. Her emotionally wounded character goes through much of the film as an excuse for disgusted pathos. But as the dust settles, Blanchett really opens up and blossoms into something of an enigma. Is the audience to feel for her, or should we want something bad to happen to her? The character's sinful nature really tests you much the same as the two leads in Hard Candy, and the audience will probably get that double-edged sword of emotions as they watch her on screen. She is very calculating, and she is very strong in her role. And for all of what she has to put up with on screen, I doubt anyone could have pulled off as nearly a strong supporting turn to Dench as Blanchett does.
But where does that leave the rest of the cast then? Overshadowed and underplayed is where. Bill Nighy, a great character actor, is given very little to do but stand and question what is going on around him. You could say that Nighy doing nothing and doing it well is attesting to how great an actor he is. But for a character that should be much more important in the scheme of things, it just comes off as a bit of a disappointment. Much the same goes for the young Andrew Simpson. He is an even more important character, but his great work as a misunderstood juvenile is very unobtrusive. When his character really should do something, he does not, and the audience is left to wonder "what if?"
On the whole, Notes on a Scandal is very well written and brilliantly acted by Dench and Blanchett. It feels like it drags itself along in some scenes and gives very little for any other actor in the film to do, but the two actresses more than make up for it. It is clearly one of the best films of last year, and more than likely, one of the most little seen.
9/10.
The film tells the story of Barbara Covett (Dench), a teacher at a local high school who is melancholic and just about ready to retire. She longs to find someone to love and to love her back. As she enters into the first day of school, she comes across the new art teacher, Sheba Hart (Blanchett), who she becomes attracted to almost instantaneously. But as she gets closer to Hart, she uncovers a rather alarming secret that may prove to be of good use to her.
Yes, by now most people should know which secret I am referring to. But as the explanation unfolds no more than twenty minutes into the film, the after effects of hearing it are still as shocking as before you knew it.
The grim picture of blackmail, deceit and sexual perversion that unfolds during the movie is nothing short of excellent. The story is very well written, and is even better narrated by Dench through her character's diary writing during the film. The bold language conveyed may be a little much to take at first, but it really makes the unnerving experience all the better. Not to mention the fact that such a dark film, the settings and images are pretty gloomy as well. The ruminating score is also very well done, and really makes many of the scenes all the stronger than they already are.
Another significant element to the film is the language mentioned earlier. At once, it is saucy, enigmatic and witty. Listening to these characters talk is like reading poetry. It is well-versed, and almost comes off like a brilliant play (it helps that it was adapted by a playwright). The language is not just higher-up sounding because it is British; it is because the film is deeply indebted to the academics. Yes, this may just be a very around-the-bit way of saying everyone in the film is a snob, but they are not. They are just very polished and intelligent.
The film more than belongs to Dench. She always acts at the most illustrious of levels. But here, she is at her absolutely best, or at least, from what I have ever seen her do. Her scheming and brooding performance as a hell-bent lesbian is simply astonishing. She brings flavour to every scene, and her emotional range is just off the charts. It is very candid in some ways, and a very honest portrayal of someone who just wants to be loved. Her character is really a ticking time bomb. At many moments, she is very restrained and holding back (in a good way mind you). But in others, she really gets going, and more than just blows up. She ignites and lights up the screen in a way that only the older British actresses can. After seeing such a dazzling performance from Helen Mirren in The Queen, and a downright wicked Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, I was not expecting another performance to be more than deserving of an Oscar. But Dench hits this out of the park, and more than deserved her nomination.
Much the same goes for Blanchett. Although she brought all that she could to Babel, you had to know that she was being very withdrawn from her usual level of intensity. But that is all brought back for her performance here. While she is not nearly as incendiary as Dench, she holds her own and pulls off a hell of a performance. Her emotionally wounded character goes through much of the film as an excuse for disgusted pathos. But as the dust settles, Blanchett really opens up and blossoms into something of an enigma. Is the audience to feel for her, or should we want something bad to happen to her? The character's sinful nature really tests you much the same as the two leads in Hard Candy, and the audience will probably get that double-edged sword of emotions as they watch her on screen. She is very calculating, and she is very strong in her role. And for all of what she has to put up with on screen, I doubt anyone could have pulled off as nearly a strong supporting turn to Dench as Blanchett does.
But where does that leave the rest of the cast then? Overshadowed and underplayed is where. Bill Nighy, a great character actor, is given very little to do but stand and question what is going on around him. You could say that Nighy doing nothing and doing it well is attesting to how great an actor he is. But for a character that should be much more important in the scheme of things, it just comes off as a bit of a disappointment. Much the same goes for the young Andrew Simpson. He is an even more important character, but his great work as a misunderstood juvenile is very unobtrusive. When his character really should do something, he does not, and the audience is left to wonder "what if?"
On the whole, Notes on a Scandal is very well written and brilliantly acted by Dench and Blanchett. It feels like it drags itself along in some scenes and gives very little for any other actor in the film to do, but the two actresses more than make up for it. It is clearly one of the best films of last year, and more than likely, one of the most little seen.
9/10.
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