Movies That Help You Understand U.S. Universities
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Where do you go after graduating from college? What do you do? If you’re smart, prepared, and honestly a little lucky, you’ll probably get a job instead of going home, getting depressed, and lazing by the pool. While not a college movie in the strictest sense, no other film captures the lethargy and frustration of the post-college years quite like The Graduate, where we watch a young Dustin Hoffman try to sort through the values of the world he’s been dumped into upon graduating.
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As legendary U.S. film critic Roger Ebert notes:
“Director Mike Nichols introduces us to a young college graduate Benjamin (played by Dustin Hoffman), who returns to a ferociously stupid upper-middle-class California suburb. He would like the chance to sit around and think about his future for several months. You know -- think? His family and their social circle demand that he perform in the role of “Successful Young Upward-Venturing Clean-Cut All-American College Grad.” At the end of two weeks Benjamin is driven to such a pitch of desperation that he demonstrates a new scuba outfit (birthday present from proud dad) by standing on the bottom of the family pool: Alone at last.”
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What’s not to love about the inspiring and true story of a college football underdog turned hero? It’s the story of Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger, an undersized kid from a working class family who gets the chance of a lifetime from a football coach – to play for the University of Notre Dame – after years of determination and hard work on the practice squad. Rudy grew up in a steel mill town where most people ended up working instead of going to college after high school, but he dreamed of playing football at Notre Dame instead.
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However, there were only a couple of problems with this dream. Rudy’s grades were a little low, his athletic skills were poor, and he was only half the size of the other players. Yet he had the drive and the spirit of 5 people combined, and continued to set his sights on joining Notre Dame’s famed “Fighting Irish” football team.
As film critic Roger Ebert remarks:
“To start with, Rudy can't get into Notre Dame. He doesn't have the grades. But he's accepted across the street at Holy Cross, where an understanding priest offers advice and encouragement. Finally Rudy is accepted by Notre Dame, one of the few remaining big football schools that still has tryouts for "walk-ons" - kids without starring high school careers or athletic scholarships.”
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Not only is Rudy an emotionally uplifting story of determination, passion and overcoming adversity,it provides a clear insight into the pervasive influence that athletics has on U.S. university culture.
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Post-graduation, a group of college students grow nostalgic for their college days and debate what to do with their post-college lives. An artistic, witty film, Kicking and Screaming depicts the struggle many students experience when trying to discover the right path following graduation.
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As film critic Roger Ebert notes：
“Distinctions of class and intelligence are the great overlooked elements in our society. Because the United States is allegedly classless, we use other markers to tell people apart, such as race, jobs or income. Many people even define themselves by the sports team they identify with, letting its accomplishments stand for their own. Yet two people of different races but similar educations may be more comfortable together than two people of the same race but different backgrounds. Class is the great unspoken basis of the friendships in "Kicking and Screaming." This is a movie about a group of smart, articulate college students who have just graduated, and are hanging around the campus before the icy blast of real life begins. They have few plans or prospects, but they trust they're clever enough to land on their feet.”
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Kicking and Screaming encapsulates the frustration that many colleges students feel upon graduation, and the struggles that they face when transitioning into adulthood and entering the “real world” of work and starting a family.
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In this Oscar winning film, a young janitor working at MIT is in fact a gifted mathematician who is guided by a psychologist to find the right path. Matt Damon gives an electrifying performance as the young protagonist Will Hunting, while Robin Williams plays Sean McGuire, a community college professor who has messed up his own life, yet is a gifted counselor who guides Will to use his talents to lead a more purposeful life. Good Will Hunting won 2 Oscars out of 9 nominations at the 1998 Academy Awards, one for Robin Williams for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, and one for both Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.
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Regarding the themes and issues highlighted in Good Will Hunting, film critic Roger Ebert points out：
“It must be heartbreaking to be able to appreciate true genius and yet fall just short of it yourself. A man can spend his entire life studying to be a mathematician--and yet watch helplessly while a high school dropout, a janitor, scribbles down the answers to questions the professor is baffled by. It's also heartbreaking when genius won't recognize itself, and that's the most baffling problem of all in “Good Will Hunting,” the smart, involving story of a working-class kid from Boston.” Good Will Hunting not only highlights that social class is not necessarily a measure of intelligence (and thus one’s ability to succeed at university), but it also provides insights into the academic, cultural and social elitism present at top U.S. universities (such as MIT and Harvard).
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As film critic Roger Ebert comments:
“Wonder Boys is the most accurate movie about college campus life that I can remember. It is accurate, not because it captures intellectual debate or campus politics, but because it knows two things: (1) Students come and go, but the faculty actually lives there, and (2) many faculty members stay stuck in graduate-student mode for decades. Michael Douglas plays a character like that. It is his best performance in years, muted, gentle and wondering. He is a boy wonder long past his sell-by date, a 50-ish English professor named Grady Tripp who wrote a good novel seven years ago, and now, everyone believes, has writer's block.”
Set at the prestigious Wellesley College in the 1950s, a progressive professor attempts to teach her female students, through art, that marriage doesn't have to be their ultimate life achievement. While many of the same issues don’t apply to modern day, it demonstrates the impact that one teacher can have on a student and how much the college experience can change an individual’s future. This film also provides an interesting insight into how the curriculum of U.S. women’s colleges changed throughout the 20th century, along with evolving social attitudes and norms particularly relating to the role of women in society and gender equality and equity.
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Film critic Roger Ebert comments on this in his review of Mona Lisa Smile:
“I find it hard to believe that Wellesley College was as reactionary in the autumn of 1953 as "Mona Lisa Smile" says it is -- but then I wasn't there. Neither were the screenwriters, who reportedly based their screenplay on Hillary Clinton's experience at Wellesley in the early 1960s. The film shows a school which teaches, above all, that a woman's duty is to stand by her man, and if Clinton learned that, she also learned a good deal more. No doubt she had a teacher as inspiring as Katherine Watson (played by Julia Roberts), who trades in the bohemian freedom of the University of California-Berkeley for a crack at Wellesley's future corporate wives. This is the kind of school which in the 1950s actually offered classes in deportment, grooming and table setting, and the teacher of those classes, Nancy Abbey takes them incredibly seriously. New Wellesley art history professor Katherine Watson finds her students scornful of her California background (every student makes it a point to be able to identify every slide of every painting in her first lecture), but she counterattacks with a blast of modern art, and there is a scene where she takes them to watch the uncrating of a new work by Jackson Pollock.”
After being rejected by every university and college to which he applies, a high school student who doesn’t want to disappoint his parents decides to create his own college. Once he invents a school (named the South Harmon Institute of Technology), other students who found themselves in similar situations, rejected from all of the colleges they applied to, begin to apply and his scheme turns into a full-blown scandal.
Accepted is based on one of the most relevant topics of teenagers today; that is, the agony and feelings of all those students who due to one reason or another are unable to get accepted to a good enough college after completion of their high school studies. For many high school seniors who have recently completed their college applications and who may not have received their most desired results, Accepted offers both empathy and a light-hearted balm to soothe their emotional and psychological wounds.
So sit back, grab some popcorn or your favorite snack, and enjoy these films that highlight the complexities, joys and unique challenges of U.S. college life and the diverse array of students that experience it. Happy watching!
