Cross-posting the full article from the Academic Affairs blog at the GC Advocate

In a pre­vi­ous GC Advo­cate arti­cle I pre­sented my list of Top 10 aca­d­e­mic films. I received some insight­ful feed­back from var­i­ous peo­ple who read the list. (And I heard from a cou­ple of friends who chas­tised me for includ­ing John Singleton’s Higher Learn­ing.)

To recap: I am inter­ested in the aca­d­e­mic film as an exten­sion of the “aca­d­e­mic novel.” Sev­eral of the works listed below were adapted from such nov­els. As the critic John Lyons sim­ply put it in his 1962 crit­i­cal study, The Col­lege Novel in Amer­ica: “I con­sider a novel of aca­d­e­mic life one in which higher edu­ca­tion is treated with seri­ous­ness and the main char­ac­ters are stu­dents or pro­fes­sors.” Extend­ing this basic con­cept to film, my objec­tive here is to find works that seri­ously exam­ine the mean­ing of higher edu­ca­tion in some way. (And I do believe that humor is cer­tainly a valid way to exam­ine higher education.)

Con­sid­er­ing the lit­er­ary form of the novel, it comes as no sur­prise that so many aca­d­e­mic nov­els are set in Eng­lish depart­ments and deal with lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sors. And con­sid­er­ing that sev­eral films have been adapted from this pool of aca­d­e­mic nov­els, that dom­i­nance extends into aca­d­e­mic films. I’ve tried to iden­tify a few more films out­side of lit­er­a­ture, and I’m always on the look­out for more. Appar­ently David Cro­nen­berg is at work on an adap­ta­tion of Jonathan Lethem’s As She Climbed Across the Table, a novel about an aca­d­e­mic physi­cist, so there is some hope on the horizon.

Lim­it­ing my pre­vi­ous list to 10 films meant exclud­ing a num­ber of other wor­thy exam­ples in this genre. So here are some brief com­ments on 10 more aca­d­e­mic films I con­sid­ered for the pre­vi­ous arti­cle. Just the for the fun of it I’m rank­ing these as well, from 20 to 11. I am also includ­ing a short list of sev­eral other notable films that fit the cri­te­ria, though this is cer­tainly not a com­pre­hen­sive list. If any­one has any more sug­ges­tions, we’d love to read your comments.

20. Pos­ses­sion (2002) – This film is based on the novel by A.S. Byatt. The direc­tor Neil LaBute is known for some appallingly awful male char­ac­ters, but the clos­est we get to that here is the faint whiff of crass Amer­i­can­ism in the char­ac­ter of Roland Mitchell (Aaron Eck­hart), a lit­er­ary scholar from the U.S. study­ing in Eng­land on a fel­low­ship. The film fol­lows the story of Mitchell and British lit­er­ary scholar Maud Bai­ley (Pal­trow) as they research a romance between two fic­tional Vic­to­rian era poets. Rarely has any film dealt with the intri­ca­cies of lit­er­ary schol­ar­ship at this level of detail, (though, yes, all the sleuthing is a tad exag­ger­ated). The period set­ting and cos­tumes in the over­lap­ping his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tive were quite lovely. That said, I imag­ine this film is pre­cisely the kind of dry, pre­ten­tious exer­cise that most peo­ple have in mind when I tell them that I’m inter­ested in films about higher edu­ca­tion. Still, this is just too much of an aca­d­e­mic film to dis­miss entirely. Unfor­tu­nately the rich mate­r­ial in Byatt’s novel just did not seem to trans­fer well to the screen.

19. The Squid and the Whale (2005) –  Directed by Noah Baum­bach (who has made a name for him­self chron­i­cling the lives of dis­con­tented yup­pie intel­lec­tu­als) The Squid and the Whale is a fam­ily drama cen­tered on a cou­ple of PhDs rais­ing a fam­ily in Brooklyn’s Park Slope in the 1980s. Bernard Berk­man (Jeff Daniels) is a pompous lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sor and nov­el­ist who is obliv­i­ous to the fact that his lit­er­ary star is rapidly fad­ing. His wife Joan (Laura Lin­ney) is grow­ing tired of his can­tan­ker­ous atti­tude, and has lit­er­ary aspi­ra­tions of her own. Their two young sons (Jesse Eisen­berg and Owen Kline) get caught up in the mix of their divorce, start act­ing out in var­i­ous ways, and are forced to accept that their father may be more of an intel­lec­tual bully and manip­u­la­tor than they real­ized. As for the aca­d­e­mic con­tent, there’s a sto­ry­line where Bernard takes up with a young female grad­u­ate stu­dent. His lit­er­ary opin­ions also make for some bit­ing moments of dry humor (in one din­ner table con­ver­sa­tion he dis­misses A Tale of Two Cities as “minor Dick­ens”). How­ever, much of the story cen­ters on the emo­tional fam­ily drama which is why, as much as I like it, I rank this one lower than other films that deal directly with higher edu­ca­tion. Still I find it a won­der­ful film oth­er­wise, espe­cially if you hap­pen to be famil­iar with this par­tic­u­lar neigh­bor­hood and its lit­er­ary denizens.

18. A Sin­gle Man (2009) – Based on the novel by Christo­pher Ish­er­wood, the film was directed by fash­ion designer Tom Ford and it cer­tainly has its share of pretty peo­ple, in pretty clothes, in pretty set­tings. How­ever the film also calls atten­tion to the homo­pho­bic polit­i­cal cli­mate of the 1950s and 60s. Isherwood’s ironic title is mean to invoke the lack of social valid­ity for homo­sex­ual rela­tion­ships dur­ing that time. The main char­ac­ter, George (Colin Firth), is a British pro­fes­sor of lit­er­a­ture teach­ing in Los Ange­les in 1962, but he is far from a sin­gle man. He has in fact just lost his part­ner of 16 years in an auto­mo­bile acci­dent, but he is not even allowed to attend the funeral. (It’s for “fam­ily only” a sym­pa­thetic rel­a­tive of his part­ner explains to him over the phone.) Claude Sum­mers at glbtq.com has writ­ten an exten­sive and insight­ful arti­cle com­par­ing the Ish­er­wood novel with the film adap­ta­tion. As Sum­mers put it: “If the film lacks the polit­i­cal edge and spir­i­tual pro­fun­dity of Isherwood’s novel, it com­pen­sates to some extent for these fail­ings by its intense feel­ing, as well as its sen­sual and ele­gant style.”

17. Won­der Boys (2000) – Adapted from Michael Chabon’s novel of the same name, Won­der Boys fea­tures Michael Dou­glas as Grady Tripp, a pot-smoking cre­ative writ­ing pro­fes­sor and nov­el­ist at a uni­ver­sity in Pitts­burgh who has been work­ing on an inter­minable novel for seven years and is deal­ing with a recent divorce. Two of his stu­dents are James Leer (Tobey Maguire), a socially awk­ward young writer who is obsessed with the details of celebrity sui­cides, and Han­nah Green (Katie Holmes) who is infat­u­ated with Tripp. The main set piece for the film is the university’s annual Word­Fest, a lit­er­ary event that brings pub­lish­ers and lit­er­ary agents, among oth­ers, to the cam­pus. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy is strik­ing, fea­tur­ing lovely gothic cam­pus scenes in the win­ter. I have not yet read the novel ver­sion, but the film seems to work wellon its own as an enter­tain­ing satire of the obnox­ious eccen­tric­ity one some­times finds among the stu­dents and pro­fes­sors in the nation’s MFA programs.

16. Tenure (2009) – This film came out in 2009 but appar­ently didn’t get much of a the­atri­cal release. It fea­tures Luke Wil­son in the role of Char­lie Thurber, a young Eng­lish pro­fes­sor up for tenure review at the fic­tional Gray Col­lege. Unfor­tu­nately for him he has spent his time becom­ing an engag­ing and effec­tive teacher rather than padding his resume with bor­ing peer-reviewed jour­nal arti­cles. The film is far from an accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of how the tenure process actu­ally works, but its heart is in the right place. It humor­ously addresses a very real and seri­ous issue in acad­e­mia: that devoted teach­ing is often val­ued less than aca­d­e­mic star­dom. Among the fun­ni­est bits in the film is the sto­ry­line with Thurber’s best friend (played by Jay Hadley), a wacky anthro­pol­ogy pro­fes­sor who spends his time comb­ing the woods for evi­dence of the elu­sive Sasquatch. The online reviews of the film are mid­dling, which might scare peo­ple off. And yes the film indulges in roman­tic com­edy clichés (Gretchen Mol plays the hot young pro­fes­sor from Yale who is hired to replace Thurber, and they fall in love.) Still, I think the film has spirit and por­trays the aca­d­e­mic life with humor, thought­ful­ness and a refresh­ing lack of pretention.

15. Dis­grace(2008) – Here is another novel adap­ta­tion, this one based on J.M. Coetzee’s Dis­grace. John Malkovich plays white South African lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sor David Lurie. Lurie is a lit­er­ary scholar in his soul, and a lover of Wordsworth and Byron, but in a cor­po­ra­tized higher edu­ca­tion sys­tem that has become dis­mis­sive of any­thing but the most imme­di­ately mar­ketable sub­jects he is rel­e­gated to teach­ing dull “com­mu­ni­ca­tions” classes to dis­in­ter­ested stu­dents. (Hon­estly, I can­not recall how well that dis­tinc­tion is dri­ven home in the film, but it cer­tainly res­onated in the novel.) The story begins with an ill-advised rela­tion­ship between Lurie and a “coloured” female stu­dent, a scan­dal which forces Lurie out of his teach­ing post. He leaves Johan­nes­burg to visit his daugh­ter Lucy in the coun­try­side where they end up being the vic­tims of an unre­lated bru­tal attack by three young black men. The attack and Lucy’s com­pli­cated response to it, which is con­tex­tu­al­ized in the novel, really needed more historical-political back­ground than the medium of film could allow. But oth­er­wise it is a com­pe­tent, well-paced adap­ta­tion of the novel, and a haunt­ing and res­o­nant piece of work on its own.

14. Edu­cat­ing Rita (1983) – In this film Michael Caine plays Frank Bryant, an apa­thetic and alco­holic lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sor who tutors Rita (Julie Wal­ters) a spunky 26 year old work­ing class stu­dent tak­ing Open Uni­ver­sity courses. (The British equiv­a­lent of our adult edu­ca­tion pro­grams here). In this Pyg­malion inspired screen­play Bryant takes a par­tic­u­lar inter­est in Rita and intro­duces her to the world of lit­er­a­ture and ideas. As Rita takes to her lit­er­ary inter­ests she finds that her newly dis­cov­ered intel­lec­tual curios­ity unex­pect­edly dri­ves a wedge between her­self and the work­ing class com­mu­nity she came from. At the same time she does not feel at home in the priv­i­leged world of the acad­emy either. The film is a won­der­ful rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a student’s evolv­ing con­scious­ness and self-confidence, and is ulti­mately a com­pelling story about the kind of lib­er­at­ing self dis­cov­ery that can come through an edu­ca­tion in the human­i­ties, par­tic­u­larly among stu­dents for whom such high-minded pur­suits are con­sid­ered mate­ri­ally “impractical.”

13. Some­thing the Lord Made (2004) – As you may have noticed, most of these films are about the human­i­ties (par­tic­u­larly Eng­lish pro­fes­sors) but here is a great aca­d­e­mic film that deals with the sci­ences. This HBO film tells the story of Vivien Thomas (won­der­fully por­trayed by Mos Def), a black sur­gi­cal assis­tant who assisted Dr. Alfred Blalock (Alan Rick­man) in devel­op­ing an open heart pro­ce­dure to cure “Blue Baby Syn­drome.” Much of the film takes place in uni­ver­sity research hos­pi­tals, at Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­sity where Blalock first hired Thomas, and then later at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity. Though he pos­sessed a rare gift as a sur­geon and was a self-taught med­ical researcher, Vivien Thomas was never able to afford to pur­sue his own med­ical degree. (The Depres­sion of the 1930s exac­er­bated his finan­cial trou­bles.) Thomas was hired and paid under the title of a jan­i­tor even though the work that he did for Blalock was that of a research assis­tant. The film sub­tly por­trays the insti­tu­tional and cul­tural racism of its time, such as one scene in the film when Thomas and a black friend are walk­ing down a side­walk chat­ting, casu­ally stop their con­ver­sa­tion to step aside and let white cou­ples pass, then pick the con­ver­sa­tion back up again with­out miss­ing a beat. That Thomas did all this ground­break­ing research while work­ing in uni­ver­sity hos­pi­tals where he was not even allowed to walk through the front door is just one of the many sto­ries of injus­tice and insti­tu­tional dis­crim­i­na­tion faced by African-Americans in the Jim Crow era.

12. Back to School (1986) – Rodney Dan­ger­field stars in this film as the buf­foon­ish street-wise mil­lion­aire Thorn­ton Melon, pro­pri­etor of a suc­cess­ful chain of “Tall and Fat” stores. To encour­age his son Jason (Keith Gor­don) to go to col­lege and acquire the for­mal edu­ca­tion he never had, Melon decides to enroll in school with him. This film is cer­tainly a silly com­edy chock full of Dangerfield’s sig­na­ture one-liners, but it also cap­tures some­thing essen­tial about the Amer­i­can atti­tude towards higher edu­ca­tion. On the one hand we see col­lege as a demo­c­ra­tic means of upward mobil­ity, but we also scoff at the col­lege as a bas­tion of elit­ism and unearned priv­i­lege. Par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing in Back to School is the con­flict between Thor­ton Melon and Dr. Bar­bay, a pompous eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sor with whom Thor­ton is com­pet­ing for the affec­tions of Eng­lish pro­fes­sor Diane Turner (Sally Keller­man). From Bill Gates to Kanye West we revel in our sto­ries of rich and famous col­lege dropouts. Dan­ger­field plays this quin­tes­sen­tial arche­type, a busi­ness­man with­out a col­lege degree who made truck­loads of money and glee­fully gives the fin­ger to all those smug col­lege dons who insist that edu­ca­tion is the only way to suc­cess, hap­pi­ness or ful­fill­ment. As much as I sup­port higher edu­ca­tion I think it’s also impor­tant to honor and cul­ti­vate that auto­di­dac­tic, do-it-yourself spirit. The film splits the dif­fer­ence by show­ing Melon encour­ag­ing his son to pur­sue an edu­ca­tional oppor­tu­nity even though he took a dif­fer­ent route in his own life.

11. Kin­sey (2004) – I have to con­fess that I really dropped the ball on this one. I saw this film in the­aters when it came out in 2004, but it took another recent view­ing for me to appre­ci­ate what an accom­plish­ment it really is. This def­i­nitely should have been near the top of my pre­vi­ous list. Per­haps more than any other film I’ve listed so far Kin­sey dri­ves home the impor­tance of aca­d­e­mic free­dom, and demon­strates how ratio­nal aca­d­e­mic inquiry can have a huge impact on the larger soci­ety. The film is a skill­fully con­structed biopic based on the life of biol­o­gist and sex researcher Alfred Kin­sey (played by Liam Nee­son) and the ground­break­ing research on human sex­u­al­ity he spear­headed at Indi­ana Uni­ver­sity. The film shows how Kinsey’s inter­est in zool­ogy and the mat­ing habits of insects and ani­mals led him to ques­tion why sim­i­lar sci­en­tific study had not been applied to human sex­u­al­ity. The film dra­ma­tizes how impor­tant it is for pub­lic health, and for the health of democ­racy, to have accu­rate sci­en­tific knowl­edge about sex­ual prac­tices avail­able in the pub­lic sphere. It effec­tively por­trays the dark ages of hypocrisy and mis­in­for­ma­tion out of which the fem­i­nist and gay rights move­ments emerged, and man­ages to do so with­out com­pro­mis­ing on all the emo­tional and polit­i­cal com­plex­ity involved.

A few more films:

(Here are just a few more aca­d­e­mic films that I iden­ti­fied but did not include in the Top 20)

Another Woman and Hus­bands and Wives. Both directed by Woody Allen. Another Woman is based on Ing­mar Bergman’s Wild Straw­ber­ries, and fea­tured Gena Row­lands as a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor on sab­bat­i­cal in New York writ­ing a book. Hus­bands and Wives includes a sto­ry­line with Allen as a nov­el­ist and cre­ative writ­ing pro­fes­sor at Colum­bia University.

A Beau­ti­ful Mind– Directed by Ron Howard the film stars Rus­sell Crowe as Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity math­e­mat­ics pro­fes­sor John Nash.

Elegy – Based on Philip Roth’s The Dying Ani­mal fea­tur­ing David Kapesh (Ben Kinglsey) a pro­fes­sor of lit­er­a­ture and “pub­lic intel­lec­tual.” Much of the aca­d­e­mic con­tent of the novel is absent in the film, but there’s plenty of naked Pene­lope Cruz, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Gaudy Night – Tech­ni­cally not a “film” but a 1987 three part BBC mini-series based on Dorothy Sayers’s 1936 mys­tery novel, set in an Oxford women’s col­lege. Beyond the mys­tery plot, the story also deals with the pol­i­tics of women’s education.

The Great Debaters – Pro­duced by Oprah, directed by Dentzel Wash­ing­ton who plays Melvin Tol­son, a poet and pro­fes­sor who directed the debate team at his­tor­i­cally black Wiley Col­lege in Texas and led them to a pio­neer­ing debate against Har­vard Uni­ver­sity. (It was actu­ally against the Uni­ver­sity of South­ern California).

Iris — Based on John Bayley’s mem­oir about his life with the nov­el­ist and pro­fes­sor Iris Mur­doch. Mur­doch and Bay­ley met, and both taught, at Oxford. Judi Dench gives a heartrend­ing per­for­mance of Mur­doch as she strug­gled with Alzheimer’s in her later years.

A Seri­ous Man – The most auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal film from the Coen Broth­ers so far. The story cen­ters on Larry Gop­nick, a Jew­ish physics pro­fes­sor in 1967 sub­ur­ban Min­nesota who is beset by a series of Job-like calami­ties. Joel and Ethan Coen were raised in Min­nesota by two aca­d­e­mic par­ents. (Their father was an econ­o­mist and their mother an art historian).

Stomp the Yard – Like Spike Lee’s School Daze, this was also filmed on my alma mater’s cam­pus. But unlike Spike Lee this film­maker seemed to think that black col­lege stu­dents are inca­pable of any intel­li­gent com­mu­ni­ca­tion beyond snarling, scowl­ing, fight­ing and danc­ing. Dis­ap­point­ing.

The Sav­ages – Indie film stal­warts Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man and Laura Lin­ney play sib­lings who reluc­tantly have to care for their estranged father. Hoffman’s char­ac­ter is a the­ater pro­fes­sor in Buf­falo, NY strug­gling to write a book on Bertolt Brecht.

Who’s Afraid of Vir­ginia Woolf – A clas­sic film (based on Edward Albee’s play) star­ring Richard Bur­ton and Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor. The film is more about an aca­d­e­mic couple’s mar­i­tal drama than about acad­e­mia itself, but at least one other critic found it an iconic work of aca­d­e­mic fic­tion. (“Who’s Afraid of the Cam­pus Novel.”)

Even more films

(I haven’t seen these yet, but GC Advo­cate edi­tor James Hoff has already been on my tail to hurry up and get some­thing posted to this blog, so per­haps I’ll write about some of these in future posts.)

The Absent-Minded Professor

Col­lege

Dark Mat­ter

Love Story

Mona Lisa Smile

Proof

P.S.

Revenge of the Nerds

Spin­ning Into Butter