Liberal Arts (2012)

I didn't go to college. It's a constant ache in my soul. I wanted to go, very badly, but it wasn't in the cards.

For one thing, in those days you had to have money to go to a university. Either that or have outstanding grades or be a gifted athlete. I was none of the above.

I had the brains for it, but I didn't have the confidence. I've written of the endless emotional abuse I suffered as a boy. All I wanted to do was hide from the world. Give me books, some privacy and a scary movie, or simply myself and my bike and I was content.

I was perfect for college. I read a lot of SF and a lot of old pulp fiction. I also read writers like Orwell, Hesse, Thoreau, and Vonnegut for pleasure. I was a prog rock kid, but I explored classical and jazz music. In short, I was intellectually curious.

Instead I entered the blue collar world, spending my time with emphatically anti-intellectual people.

Despite the pain it brings me, I like college-set stories. Liberal Arts is one of the best.

I happened upon the DVD while in a thrift store. I saw it was an IFC movie, and the synopsis sounded good, I figured Liberal Arts would be a decent watch, then I could re-donate it.

Nope. This one stays in my collection.

Liberal Arts is a romance, but the main love interest is with education and the joys that come from it. It's a beautiful, tender, sometimes bittersweet look at a man and his enduring love of college life.

Triple hyphenate (Writer-director-star) Josh Radnor is Jesse, an thirty-something guy whose life is in stasis. His job as an admissions counselor brings him little joy, and it's a pale substitute for his college years. Things change when a beloved professor invites Jesse back to his alma mater for a retirement dinner.

Jesse meets a student, Zibby, played by Elizabeth Olsen. They embark on a relationship, but thankfully this isn't another Woody Allen story about a older man with a young girl.

No, Liberal Arts celebrates books and music in a joyous way. The movie demonstrates how art, the best of it anyway, forced us to see the world in different ways. How a brilliant book, or piece of music, changes our perception, making mundane reality more vivid and beautiful.

Liberal Arts also points out the dangers of elite snobbism. How being too much of a pedant can lead to unhappiness and social isolation.

Mostly this movie is a poignant love song to the arts and the benefits that come to those of us who live for them. Radnor and Olson are a joy to behold. It's always good to see Richard Jenkins in any movie, and his portrayal as the elderly professor is as funny as it is heartbreaking. Allison Janney is great in one of her acidic monster roles.

The end of Liberal Arts goes a little too much into schmaltz territory, but I forgive it. I unabashedly loved the movie, and I unreservedly recommend it to anyone who lives for books, music, and learning of all kinds.

Just watch it and if you went, relive your college days. The time when young people discussed books and ideas. Before life eroded optimism. When the future stretched out ahead with infinite possibilities. If, like me, you didn't go, Liberal Arts is a great way to get a taste of it.

Written by Mark Sieber