Liberal Arts

Synopsis: Thirty-something Jesse Fisher (Josh Radnor) may have completed college but he’s never truly left it. He’s now an admissions officer, more often lost in nostalgia for the days when he could read books without interruption than focused on the here and now. When one of his favourite professors, Peter (Richard Jenkins), retires he’s asked back to his alma mater to say a few words at the farewell dinner. While there he meets Zibby (Elizabeth Olsen), the daughter of one of Peter’s friend.

It’s a fairly stock trope in cinema: the older man and the younger woman. And it goes unquestioned, for the most part. Usually the girl is slightly wiser than her years and the guy is in a state of arrested development. I’m looking at you, Garden State. Zach Braff’s homecoming film was my initial reference point for this film. In the former it’s actually home, in Radnor's case it’s more of a spiritual home. But similarities pretty much end there, and while it lacks the peppy soundtrack, Liberal Arts has got a lot more smarts than I expected, based on my referent.

Liberal Arts is not so much a film about ageing as much as it’s a film about the stages of life and how we cling to the past rather than embracing the new. Jesse is lost in nostalgia for a time in his life when he actually had time. Peter is initially excited to move onto post-academic life, but as the realities of retirement loom large he starts to lose his nerve. Both men long to be where they felt themselves at their most vital.

And that is where Zibby fits in. She’s living the kind of life that Jesse misses so much and the two of them connect over a shared sensibility. She views herself romantically as a bit of an anachronism, insisting on them hand writing letters to each other and other such touches long gone from the modern age. Jesse is well aware of the age gap, and in a brief and hysterical sequence tries to map out on paper a way to not seem like a creepy old man by calculating the age gap at various points in their shared future.

The great thing about Liberal Arts is that it brings to the surfaces the common truth that few people talk about. Nobody thinks of themselves as old. I don’t think of myself as old as I’m only 36, but when I talk to people in their twenties I realise the gap in life experience is profound.  Jesse realises it too but  when he tries to explain himself to Zibby he just comes off as patronising. Which is pretty much how anyone is going to sound when explaining something to someone too young to understand what they’re talking about, even if they really do know better.  It’s not exactly a flattering reality, but you have to admire a filmmaker willing to make himself look like a bit of a prat in order to hold to the truth of a scene.

Sitting down to watch Liberal Arts, I was all set for a vanity project, an actor/writer/director throwing himself into a story where he ends up with a cute and much younger girl. So colour me surprised that Radnor doesn’t go all out on American Indie Quirkiness. Instead, what we’ve got is a film that quietly and quite funnily explores what it means to admit to yourself that you’re not 19 anymore, even if deep down that's how you feel.

 

 

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