My Comments on “Mona Lisa Smile”

My Comments on “Mona Lisa Smile”

After watching the movie “Mona Lisa Smile”, I have many feelings to pour out. And write is comments to show my feelings.

To be honest, I have never heard about this movie before seeing it. I have to say it’s an excellent mo vie. We can see the freedom the movie wants to express. After watching this movie, I have to say, I can’t remember the roles’ name. These people make me feel mixed and don’t know who is who. So I have to search on the Internet to looking for some explanations.

During this movie,Katherine Ann Watson has accepted a position teaching art history at the prestigious Wellesley College. Watson is a very modern woman, particularly for the 1950s, and has a passion not only for art but for her students. For the most part, the students all seem to be biding their time, waiting to find the right man to marry. The students are all very bright and Watson feels they are not reaching their potential. Although a strong bond is formed between teacher and student, Watson's views are incompatible with the dominant culture of the college.In this famous woman Wesleyan University, most students have a good family background, they have received an excellent education in their childhood. But college students' education is not to teach them how to get their interested subject knowledge, nor the psychological importance of education, but the students' success is defined as the future of marriage. their learning, their goal is to marry a good husband. Several students like Betty, Joan and Levy likes flirt in the class, and even make a challenge by using the various approaches to the teacher in the classroom. Katherine Ann Watson doesn't followed the school's style of teaching practices like other teachers, she not only make a challenges to some of the practices and rules of the school , but also encourage students to explore their own interests, and daring to practice their ideas. She eventually used her youthful straightforward style, extensive knowledge of art history and humor enthusiastic teaching style win the respect and affection of the students, and were known as the "Smile Mona Lisa." One is the traditional forces such as the schools do "otherness" of the woman reached her goal success,

I like Katherine Ann Watson, the new professor of Art History in 1953 Wellesley College in "Mona Lisa Smile". She is a liberal-minded west-coast art teacher who finds herself with the opportunity to take over a similar position at Wellesley College, an ultraconservative women's college in 1953. Watson arrives, hoping to "make a difference" in the lives of some of the smartest women in the country by extending the notion of "traditional" attitudes about art to attitudes about life, and the life of women in particular. And the title does not refer to her; instead it is embedded in remarks in the screen1play about the actual painting of The Mona Lisa. Not everything turns out well in this movie, it more closely reflects real life.

Betty Warren has enough clout that she can make or break any teacher she doesn't like. She is a cruel woman who will destroy anything that stands in her way. She has the kind of power and uses it to her advantage. For Joan, she proves ultimately she is a coward, who will abandon her dream in order to marry a man who is obviously a loser. Joan’s decision is largely a compromise to traditional values, but this is not simply a compromise, but the decision that was made after consideration of Joan. The purpose of Katherine Ann Watson may be good for the liberation of women. But fundamentally speaking, I think that women are to learn to be independent, learn to think from their own perspective. Maybe Joan did not do things independently, but she has done her thinking, and responsible for her actions. For gender equality, for women emancipation, education will play an indispensable and irreplaceable role, but play this role is conditional. To be more precise, there is a critical period of early too late, do not will appear the best results, even diametrically opposite to the opposite effect occurs. Giselle Levy is the only one who is her own person and could not care less what anyone thinks about her, or what she does.

The ending is a bit hard to take because it's impossible to digest that suddenly Betty has seen the light and will even consider sharing an apartment in New York with Giselle Levy, or will be friends. Betty is the most complex character in the film. Her hair has the right shade of blonde that is acceptable to the people in her circle.

Nancy Abbey was excellent as the repressed spinster that has been in this school too long. President Jocelyn Carr and Amanda Armstrong don't get much to do, but

their presence at key moments of the film is very effective. The focus of the film is primarily on the somewhat radical character of Watson and how she deals with the conservative environs of Wellesley College. She is able to build a great rapport with her students, something which happens rather spontaneously and is not explained - one of the flaws in the film. Eventually though, she must face the conservative forces in the college and decide whether she can bend her values and beliefs in order to stay on at the college。

I think both men and women can relate to this movie. The women who grew up in the era may see it as a reminder of how things were. The men may have their eyes opened and be able to see the era from the women's point of view. I also think the subject matter is still pertinent in today's world. There are some women who go to college to find a husband, and for them, that may be ok. For myself, this movie reminds me that, in any era, a woman or a man has the right to make a choice that works for them, regardless of whether or not it conforms to what is expected of them.

The film deserves unexpected credit for not casting itself as a unilateral message of contemporary feminism. It allows Watson, as the enlightened teacher, to offer her message of women's potential in non-traditional roles, yet also allows one of her students to assert the right to choose that traditional role without condescension.