The
Art of Getting By
Rated PG-13. Our Ratings: V-4; L -1; S/N -1.
Running time: 1 hour 24 min
 |
George and Sally attend an exclusive Manhattan prep school. © 2011 Fox Searchlight Films |
Go to the ant, you lazybones;
consider its ways, and be wise.
Without having any chief
or officer or ruler,
it prepares its food in summer,
and gathers its sustenance in harvest.
How long will you lie there, O lazybones?
Proverbs 6:6-9a
Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What do people gain from all the toil
at which they toil under the sun?
Ecclesiastes 1:2-3
So many films centering on teenagers are so saturated with sex and fart jokes
that this Sundance film (origi
nally titled Homework) seems weightier than it really is. In reference to
the Seven Deadly Sins, it is not
lust, but sloth that is the central quality of anti-hero George Zinavoy (Freddie
Highmore). “Ennui” might be a better word, the high school senior
having given upon life. He has a caring mother and stepfather who are able
to send him to a prestigious private school where his teachers and principal
also care for him. He is gifted with a great artistic ability, though in
the eyes of his teachers he misuses it by using all of his textbooks as sketchpads.
But life for him is devoid of meaning, hence, the problem that has landed
him in trouble is his refusal to do any of his homework throughout his senior
year.
He livens up a bit when he meets Sally (Emma Roberts), even rising to the
principal’s challenge to complete all of his homework and papers in
order to receive his diploma. But then writer/director Gavin Weisen sidetracks
the story with an unlikely subplot in which the adult artist whom George
has come to admire, enters into a romantic relationship with the teenaged
girl, and… There so many other things in the film also hard to accept,
such as the ease with which Sally and George can get into liquor-serving
establishments and his mother’s seeming lack of concern as to the whereabouts
of her son when he spends the night with Sally.
Other than a reference to the break-up of his father and mother and the former’s
neglect of him, we are given little information as to why he is so down on
life. It is certainly not due to neglect by the staff at his school, all
of whom try to encourage him. Maybe all we can say about him is that, whether
or not he has read Ecclesiastes (we do know that he has read Camus and goes
to Francois Truffaut and listens to Leonard Cohen’s music), he has
embibed too much of the Preacher’s sour take on life, without the saving
grace of the Preacher’s words in the epilogue, “The end of the
matter; all has been heard. Fear God, and keep his commandments; for that
is the whole duty of everyone.”