The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Last night I watched The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie starring Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens (parents to the stupidly hot Toby Stephens). I wanted to see this movie mostly because while I know Maggie Smith well from lots of things, including the Harry Potter series, I had no idea who Robert Stephens was.

Anyway, the plot of the this movie is that Jean Brodie is a teacher in Scotland in the 1930's. She's something of a free spirit because rather than getting married she chooses to dedicate her prime to her pupils. In the meantime, she has affairs with the married art teacher (played by R. Stephens) and the music teacher. Miss Brodie teaches the girls about art and life and many other things. And in one scene she awesomely states that Giotto is the best of all Italian Renaissance painters (and then goes on to display a picture that was part of a whole chapel he painted and I wrote a paper about; I love me some Giotto). Anyway, apologies about that total sidebar.

So, basically, Miss Brodie has this group of four girls that she takes under her wing and tries to cultivate them. One of them, Sandy, begins to harbor some ill will towards Miss Brodie. It seems to begin with Miss Brodie not calling her pretty but then grows and grows. Finally Sandy has the ultimate betrayal of getting Miss Brodie fired from her job because Sandy disagrees with Miss Brodie's politics. In Sandy's defense, Miss Bordie did support Mussolini's Facism and Generalissimo Franco. But Sandy's real problem was an underlying jealousy of Miss Brodie.

Anyway, I am writing about this movie because I am not sure exactly what the moral of this story is. I mean, it's almost like the movie was saying "well, if you choose to not marry then you deserve to be shit canned by your bitter students." But it's not really all that favorable to the Sandy character either. Personally, I wanted Miss Brodie to smack the little frakker at the end of the movie.

As a final aside, Maggie Smith was quite the looker when she was young. I can see exactly where Toby gets his good looks from. Also, I can see why Smith won the Best Actress Oscar for this film. She acts the heck out of this role. Even though I was a bit perplexed by some aspects of this film, I still recommend it.