The Riot Club

Into the bleakness.

Excessive wealth descends upon an unsuspecting family restaurant in Lone Scherfig's The Riot Club, debauched plutocrats at play, members of an exclusive enclave celebrating to excess in order to excrete authoritative postulates, rancid ribald raunch, the pecking order coaxing adroitly, a vaporous shroud, puffing up the smoke.

The club, the Riot Club, has been devoted to unfettered hedonism for centuries, but in this instance their antics are viciously nuanced, thereby vilifying their freedoms and demonizing their lust.

For chaos.

A lone voice criticizes the calumny, a new member of the club, but his opponent picks up on his indignation, and instigates the reckless in turn, consequently augmenting his rank.

The bourgeoisie holds fast to its integrity, refusing to perform like enslaved sycophantic drones.

The Riot Club plays a dangerous game; it seemed to me that abuse was encouraging latent sentiments of class consciousness within in order to deride the truly wicked, but it could be seen as a festive carnal salute to elitist angst, flagitiously large and in charge, seeking to practically express itself.

The film diversifies several characters, examines responsibility from multiple perspectives, uses its characters to make side comments on issues such as ethnocentricity and belonging, before igniting an inflammatory controversy which makes a sensational yet memorable impact.

Co-existence never seemed like much of a problem to me, you learn from different perspectives, take into account alternative points of view, make related choices.

If group dynamics aggressively seek to enlarge themselves through physical and/or psychological violence, and this behaviour is culturally normalized, a different standard of social etiquette reemerges, whose focus on threats and preemptive strikes significantly pollutes social spheres.

Replacing respect with animosity burgeons tyrannical dividends.

Controversial film.

An Education

Difficult, being a young romantically inexperienced teenaged student studying hard to be accepted by Oxford while dealing with the daily complications of social and familial life. In Lone Scherfig's An Education, we meet such a person named Jenny (Carey Mulligan), an ambitious confused high-spirited girl attending an exclusively female school in London during the 1960s. Things proceed as per usual until the free-spirited thrity-something handsome heartthrob David (Peter Sargaard) enters her life by offering her a ride. The two hit it off and both Jenny and her parents are overwhelmed by David's manners, culture, gifts, and charm. Musical performances, trips to the country, a weekend in Paris, dinner and dancing: an enticing and exciting courtship ensues. But things aren't as austere as they originally seem to be, and the bright and promising future David offers may be nothing more than dust in the wind.

An Education intelligently examines what can be thought of as future prospects from multiple angles. Each adult represents a different potential life path for Jenny and she's bewildered by the options. Should she spend her life studying dry literature in dusty educational institutions just so she can wind up teaching dry literature in dusty educational institutions? If she marries rich will her future be secure as her father (Alfred Molina) hopes? Should she emulate her mother (Cara Seymour) and wind up reserved and complacent after years of predictable middle-class married life? Or follow Helen's (Rosamund Pike) fashionably fast-paced footsteps, sacrificing knowledge for glamour in an epicurean salute to the avant-garde?

The point is, it's difficult to be young, and boring to be proper, and when exhilarating opportunities arise it's easy to let them take control. And youth and financial insecurity are sincere motivators as Jenny's father regrettably points out. If you make the "wrong" decision and follow a problematic path, you will certainly face consequences for your actions. But An Education demonstrates that such consequences are by no means absolute which is refreshing to see since so many films rely on melodramatic retributive constructs to "dramatically" tie things together.

Lorne Scherfig's Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself is a really cool film too.