“People
have always trusted me with their secrets. But who do I trust with mine?” – Barbra Covett.
Watching films should be above else
an enjoyable experience. Of course you get those stinker films which have you
question whether you could have spent one-and-a-half-hours to three hours of your
life doing something meaningful – but the majority of the time I love watching
films.
And then I came across Notes on a Scandal – a film so well acted, so well directed and so emotionally impactful but a film which I struggle to call ‘enjoyable’.
...
Notes on a Scandal is about a new
teacher, Sheba (Cate Blanchett) having an affair with a 15 year old school boy,
Sean Connolly (Andrew Simpson). Another more senior teacher, Barbra (Dame
Judi Dench) finds out.
...
The set up of an older woman or
teacher having an affair with a student is nothing new to film but there is
something interesting and fresh about the way Note of a Scandal presents this scenario
and all credit has to go to Blanchett and Simpson for selling it. They present
their characters' scenario as an almost schoolyard relationship (Yeh, I know. But
you know what I mean). You almost, and I mean almost cheer for them, just before you gain your senses and realise what the hell is going on.
...
Instead of the film being about
Sheba and her sordid affair, it becomes a film about Barbra. For some reason that film, for me, presents uneasy questions and becomes very difficult to watch. It
becomes a film about loneliness; not being alone as I know it - for a couple of
years or so - but being alone for almost an entire lifetime. Imagine having no one
to love you back like you love them and, as she says at the beginning, having
no one to share your secrets with.
Another important thing to say about this film is that it is incredibly funny – and that humour is juxtaposed with imagery that shouldn’t be funny. For example, later on in the film Barbra says in her narration, that Sheba doesn’t know what loneliness is, and I paraphrase: "When you haven’t been touched in so long that one brush from a bus conductor sends a twinge to your groin". That is funny, terribly heartbreaking, but funny nonetheless.
Another important thing to say about this film is that it is incredibly funny – and that humour is juxtaposed with imagery that shouldn’t be funny. For example, later on in the film Barbra says in her narration, that Sheba doesn’t know what loneliness is, and I paraphrase: "When you haven’t been touched in so long that one brush from a bus conductor sends a twinge to your groin". That is funny, terribly heartbreaking, but funny nonetheless.
A lot of her problems come from
having too much pride – pride at her status in society (despite being a teacher
living in what looks like a dreary London flat) and not wanting to be
associated with something she perceives as beneath her, such as being gay. That
is the point of Barbra, she comes from a generation where it was not okay to be
gay, where it wasn’t widely accepted and so she tries to turn her lesbianism
into something akin to a Jane Austen novel (note: I have never read a single
Jane Austen novel).
Throughout the whole film she tries
to manipulate and trap Sheba into being her ‘lifelong companion’ but it is
telling that at the end when all her lies come out in the open she admits that
she needs “more than a friend”. The utter desperation of Judi Dench’s character
is palpable that by the end of the film you hope she finally finds
happiness when she meets another young woman – even though you know that it is
likely she won’t.
...
What you have with Notes on a Scandal is one of the best British films I have ever seen. But I did not enjoy it. I spent too much time grimacing and feeling awfully sorry for a lot of people on this film who I consider to be morally troubling.
What this film left me with is questions about the previous generation of gay people in the UK. What happened to them? Are they living happy lives or are they as lonely as Judi Dench’s Barbra is.
