Sunday Review: Words and Pictures

Sometimes it's war

By Morris Dean

Words and Pictures (2013, directed by Fred Schepisi) is set in an upscale preparatory school in Maine that hires accomplished professionals as teachers of its advanced courses, including Jack Marcus, a writer who has taught English there for a number of years, and Dina Delsanto, an artist just joining the staff as an art teacher.

    Jack Marcus is flamboyant and playful, continually offering word games in the teachers' lounge, remarkably adept at engaging and challenging his students, and not making too big a deal of having bedded a school administrator (Elspeth, played by Amy Brenneman) who is now skeptical of his fitness to continue teaching at the school. And he regularly brings vodka to school in a canteen to fortify his lunches.
    Nina Delsanto has rheumatoid arthritis and stoically gets around with a crutch to support her failing body. She hasn't painted anything good in a while, and has moved from New York to Maine so that her sister and her mother can help as her arthritis worsens. A perfectionist with no interest in her students' personal lives, she's all business in class, pointedly challenging her students to look and feel – have they put something on the canvas that a viewer can feel is real? But she's willing to engage Marcus in his word games, earning his admiration and gratitude for the challenge. A war of words and pictures emerges, but they like each other.
    There's lots to like about the film:

• Clive Owen as the writer & Juliette Binoche as the artist.
• The thrilling pedagogical artistry of both teachers – their commitment, their ideals, their effectiveness.

• The distinctive personalities of a few colleagues, especially Walt (played by Bruce Davison), who supports Jack in the face of the threat that he might lose his job for habitual lateness and the fact that the school's literary magazine no longer seems to merit the school's limited budgeting.
• Colorful students, especially Swint (played by Adam DiMarco) and Emily (played by Valerie Tian), whom Swint flagrantly pursues despite her protests.
• The brilliant language and penetrating works of art that emerge from the dramatic strife of teaching and waging intellectual war.
• Realistic complications driving the plot and character development, including:
• Jack's troubled relationship with his estranged son (Tony, played by Christian Scheider) on account of Jack's drinking,
• Dina's despair over her arthritis's encroachment on her ability to paint,
• Jack's own despair over his inability any longer to write anything original,
• Dina's star student's compassion for her teacher and her desire to help,
• The posting of a defamatory drawing on the school's website, which forces the principal (Rashid, played by Navid Negahban) to enlist Jack & Dina to help identify the culprit, and, of course,
• Jack's attraction to and sympathy for Dina, who has reservations about his sincerity and honesty, even his honesty with himself.

That's even more than I thought I could think of when I started to list things to like about Words and Pictures, and I didn't elaborate on the academic war between words and pictures that Jack encourages to revitalize the school's literary magazine and demonstrate that he deserves to be kept on the payroll.

The big event to decide the winner of the war between words & pictures

    Only one thing not to like: in one scene Jack Marcus quotes The Declaration of Independence and says "unalienable" instead of "inalienable." Actor Owen may be English, but director Schepisi is Ameri—no, wait, he's Australian! Those Brits!

Copyright © 2015 by Morris Dean