Mona Lisa Smile

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Mona Lisa Smile
Directed by Mike Newell
Produced by Joe Roth
Starring Julia Roberts
Kirsten Dunst
Julia Stiles
Maggie Gyllenhaal
Ginnifer Goodwin
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
Release date(s) December 19, 2003
Running time 117 min.
Language English
Budget $65,000,000
IMDb profile

Mona Lisa Smile is a 2003 film that was produced by Revolution Studios and Columbia Pictures, directed by Mike Newell, written by Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal, and starring Julia Roberts, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kirsten Dunst, and Julia Stiles. The title is a reference to the Mona Lisa, the famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci, and the song of the same name, originally performed by Nat King Cole, which was covered by Seal for the movie. The film is a loose adaptation of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, a novel by Muriel Spark, and the title also references that text.

Contents

[edit] Box office performance

  • Costs (approximate):
    • Production: $65,000,000
    • Marketing: $25,000,000
  • Income:
    • United States: $63,860,942
    • Worldwide (excluding US): $76,972,150

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Mona Lisa Smile tells the story of a feminist teacher ("Katherine Watson"), who, after graduating from the fictional "Oakland State" University (thought to be a fictionalized University of California, Berkeley), leaves her boyfriend behind in Los Angeles, California in 1953, to teach at Wellesley College, a women's college in the Eastern coast of the United States. The movie portrays Wellesley in the 1950s as being conservative.

Watson tries to open her students' minds to their freedom to do whatever they want with their lives. She encourages her students to believe in themselves, to study to become career professionals, and to improve their economic futures. She utilizes her art teachings as a vehicle to put across her opinion to the young women; that her students needn't conform to stereotypes of women made by society, or the roles made for them by society, as women born to become housewives and mothers. She felt that women could do more things in life than solely adopt the roles of wives and mothers. In one scene of the movie, she shows her students four newspaper ads, and asks them to question what the future will think of the idea that women are born into the roles of wives and mothers.

Watson's ideas and ways of teaching were contrary to methods deemed acceptable by the school's directors; conservative women who believed firmly that Watson should not use her class to express her points of views or befriend students, and should stick only to teaching art. Watson was warned that she could be fired if she continued acting the way she did around students.

Undaunted, Watson becomes stronger in her speeches about feminism and the future of women. She is a firm believer that the outlook of women in society needed to be changed if women were to achieve better futures, and that she needed to instill a spirit of change among her students.

Watson chooses to leave after the one year, but, as she was leaving the campus for the last time, her students run after her car, to show her affection and thank her for her lessons. Many people have noticed the film's similarity to Dead Poets Society even going so far as to refer to it as "the feminist Dead Poets Society" or "Dead Poets Society with girls" [1]. It was released on VHS and DVD on July of 2004.

[edit] Reaction from Wellesley alumnae

In a message to Wellesley alumnae concerning the film, Wellesley College president Diana Chapman Walsh expressed some degree of regret concerning the distressed reactions of some Wellesley alumnae to the film. Many alumnae who attended Wellesley during the 1950s felt that the film's portrayal of Wellesley as a stodgy, conservative college was inaccurate.

[edit] Cast

[edit] External links

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