Movie Review – The English Teacher (2013)

The English Teacher, 2013.

Directed by Craig Zisk.

Starring Julianne Moore, Lily Collins, Michael Angarano, Greg Kinnear, and Nathan Lane.

An English teacher’s life is disrupted when a former student returns to her small town after failing as a playwright in New York.

For a writer, failure is inherently less sexy than adversity – it’s adversity that is the catalyst for change. Failure comes with characters having exhausted all their avenues and accepted their reality, but it’s here that The English Teacher paints its triptych of bruised and broken dreams. Opening with the austere tones of Fiona Shaw’s narrator we’re introduced to our bashful hero through a montage of her forays into romance with a series of idiots, aided by on-screen assessments in red pen with a grade befitting their failings. Ms. Sinclair, we’re told, is a passionate woman; a romantic who found sanctuary in books from an early age before dedicating her life to inspiring that same passion in the minds of children.

Returning to her bubble of small-town Kingston, Pennsylvania is ex-student Jason (Michael Angarano), having failed to achieve his dream of becoming a New York playwright. After a slight misunderstanding and a face full of pepper spray Linda reads his rejected opus -The Chrysalis- and hails it a staggering work of heartbreaking genius. From here it’s passed along to Nathan Lane’s drama teacher who then dedicates himself to organising a high school production of Jason’s play. Here begins the farce as egos, budget and concerned staff impact upon the fragile construction of imagination, one built entirely with hope and enthusiasm. While Linda is resigned to her fate and Jason has retreated from his, Lane’s teacher has couched his defeat in delusion – relating his tale of a three-word encounter with Stephen Sondheim during a failed audition to his students with all the profundity of the first person to read from the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Long-time TV director Craig Zisk doesn’t quite manage to break free of the box as he fails to provide any visual punch, instead providing a perfunctory sequence of  events that puts an additional weight onto the shoulders of the performers, and while the cast may be up to the challenge unfortunately the script is not. With ample material to draw on The English Teacher’s most egregious narrative misstep is in Linda and Jason’s “minor indiscretion,” coupled with the fallout as those around them find out and react in required horror. The heartbreak of creative aspirations unfulfilled is then sidelined as we detour into self-loathing and regret. From this point on the film’s aim is lowered and it hits this mark, with both the characters and script arriving at catharsis through compromise. The portrayal of a deeply insecure writer is well-observed and acted, but Angarano’s troubled character crosses the line from complex to bratty as a result of diminished screentime upon the film’s shift in focus.

Julianne Moore plays Linda Sinclair with a buttoned-down dignity that proves to be the heart of the film, but she remains Julianne Moore; her muted wardrobe and decades-old eye-wear can’t mask the ingrained charisma. Her portrayal of a spinster doesn’t work on paper, but Moore’s complete devotion and physical alacrity manages to sell the character within the context of the surrounding production. Nathan Lane is a delight, and while there are depths to his character that the film chooses not to plumb, he still manages to perfectly walk the line between sympathy and comedy. Lane’s tales of noncommittal off-hand remarks from various titans of theatre serving as his inspiration to keep acting are a particular highlight, while neatly summarising his entire being. The remaining cast are all supporting but there isn’t a single weak link – Lily Collins’ high school student, for example, who may function as a plot device, but whose performance and accent are both better than her role as an agent in Moore’s downfall. Greg Kinnear is given a largely thankless role, comprised primarily of disapproving looks and aggravation before revealing himself to be a romantic partner within the last ten minutes, but what’s there is solid. Jessica Hecht and Norbert Butz manage to provide a streak of pure comedy as a discombobulated and conservative Principal and Vice Principal, but their deployment is also infrequent enough that they don’t get much of a chance to leave a mark.

The passion that Moore’s character yearns for is one which the viewer should be acutely sympathetic to as The English Teacher itself is somewhat unremarkable. With performances that rise above the material and an aesthetic that reflects the version of Linda we’re told is not the real one, it’s perhaps a shame that we’re not taken further down the rabbit hole of personal and professional capitulation.