An Education Film Essay

Analyse how conflict (either internal or external) was used in a film you have studied to help us better understand a main character. “Often, it’s not about becoming a new person, but becoming the person you were meant to be, and already are, but don’t know how to be.” An Education directed by Lone Scherfig is a film about coming of age and discovering whom we are. The film is set in the early 1960’s a time ruled by moral code and strong feminist rules. Jenny is the main character who is 16 and aspiring to read English at Oxford. She soon meets playboy David, who seduces her and they fall in love. This relationship lets Jenny see into a whole new world of thrilling and current things. This creates a big internal conflict for Jenny who now must decide what she wants to do with her life. She has three pathways she can choose from, and the characters of Helen, Mrs. Stubbs and Jenny’s mother Marjorie model all of these paths. She must decide if she wants to live an exciting life but is filled with fraud and larceny. She can also living a boring life of teacher marking ‘pony essays’ but also one that has had the purpose of an education and is fulfilling in numerous ways. Jenny can also become a housewife though like her mother Marjorie, this is the most common paths for women in the 1960’s and is a tedious and unfulfilling lifestyle. Jenny is internally conflicted between all three of these paths, because whichever one she picks will determine the rest of her life.

Very early on in the film we are introduced to the character of Helen, she is an affluent person and lives an abundant life style of which many people in the 1960’s would be jealous. She has the privilege of lavish clothes, attending fabulous concerts, going to art auctions, eating in Michelin star restaurants and traveling the world. This is the life Jenny wants to live. Jenny is able to access this life style through David; he opens her up to all sorts of new possibilities. When we first meet Helen at