Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Liberal Arts

Very good film. No special effects. No wanton sex. Very cerebral (characters read books!). In other words, a mature film —which, of course, had terrible box office. Ebert quite liked it, as did I.


Josh Radnor's "Liberal Arts" is an almost unreasonable pleasure about a jaded New Yorker who returns to his alma mater in Ohio and finds that his heart would like to stay there. It's the kind of film that appeals powerfully to me; to others, maybe not so much. There is a part of me that will forever want to be walking under autumn leaves, carrying a briefcase containing the works of Shakespeare and Yeats and a portable chess set. I will pass an old tree under which once on a summer night I lay on the grass with a fragrant young woman and we quoted e.e. cummings back and forth.

The  entire review is worth quoting, really.

"Liberal Arts" has been criticized in some quarters as a sitcom, in part because Radnor stars in a famous one, "How I Met Your Mother." Those who see it that way are well-guarded. God forbid that they would ever "fall for anything." I strive to leave myself vulnerable.
There is a word to explain why this particular film so appealed to me. Reader, that word is "escapism." If you understand why I used the word "reader" in just that way, you are possibly an ideal viewer for this movie.

Merci beaucoup .

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