Notes On Notes On A Scandal

When a friend asked me my impressions on the movie Notes on a Scandal, I told her, “It was excellent, but depressing.” We both observed how rare it is that a superior film falls into descriptions of "humorous," or "uplifting." The movie is located in Islington, an area in London where once a native asked me how to get to Kentish Town Road. When I gave him detailed directions, his girlfriend punched him in the arm and said, “A YANK had to tell you that.” The gist of the movie is about two women, each lonely in her own way: the unglamorous, acerbic Barbara, played by Judi Dench, and lucky by birth Bathsheba, born into privilege and beauty, played by Cate Blanchett.

Sheba, as a novice teacher, meets Barbara, the experienced pro, and they quickly form a friendship, while knowing very little of each other. Later it is revealed that Sheba has already fallen into a physical relationship with her 15-year old pupil, an Irish boy named Steven, but this scandal seems largely downplayed while the film explores issues of loneliness, revenge, privilege and desires. Barbara witnesses one of these illicit intimacies and uses it for leverage to control Sheba who has evolved into her obsession. The relationship between these two women becomes the crux of the film. Since Barbara (Judi Dench) is responsible for the voice-over narration in the film, you are always receiving her perceptions, but it is through the disclosed actions of the film that you see other aspects of her own behavior. Her voice is so rational and salient that the discoveries are unexpected and reveal a mind driven mad by loneliness. (I should mention that Bill Nighy is in this film as Sheba’s husband, Richard. He continues to amaze me in terms of the breadth of the roles he tackles. He is currently in a David Hare play on Broadway (with Julianne Moore) called The Vertical Hour.)

A while back, when I was in London for long periods of time, I used to marvel that they ran commercials before the movie. It seemed so odd, and I was proud of the fact that we didn’t have this nasty practice back in the States. Last night while I sat through the ads, there were (I lost count of how many) pitches for Coca Cola, and the usual shill for the National Guard. This older woman in front of me with her calico hair tossed up in a loose bun, a la Katharine Hepburn said, “That’s enough propaganda,” after seeing the second ad. You sensed a certain desperation for enrollment in the military. Another aspect of living in London is the media. Every day you can go into a newsagent like W. H. Smith and buy a sheaf of newspapers, many of them nothing more than scandal sheets. This certainly comes out in the movie where once Sheba's involvement with the student does break (leaked by Barbara), reporters hound both women, repeatedly shouting out to Barbara, calling her a "crone."

One thing that continues to amaze me is the willingness of the British actress to sidestep her American counterpart’s habits of plastic surgery and the pursuit of external youth. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Judi Dench look plainer: a lumpy wardrobe, fried hair, with every wrinkle deeply etched. So stripped of beauty, her talent seemed comparable to being alone in the desert with only her acting to support her. Cate Blanchett seems luminous in the film. Shot in one scene sitting on a toilet, she looked as elegant as a fawn in the forest, ready to startle. Sheba doesn’t seem aware of her beauty and never uses it as leverage for control or power. I thought of that aspect of beauty so at odds with the bombardment of visual images we receive of incubus Paris Hilton sucking the life blood out of the camera lens.
The loneliness of an older woman, and it’s emotional and physical isolations, made me think of a fact mentioned in the book I am currently reading called The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic — and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Mark Coleman. While this specific area of Soho was being ravaged by cholera in 1849, men who were tracking the outbreak couldn’t understand why older women were being spared in this attack on the population. Investigators of the time thought perhaps it might be due to sturdier constitutions or more hygenic lifestyles, when in truth the answer lay in the women being old, infirm, living alone and having no one to bring the tainted water to them.

Sheba is lonely in a seemingly vibrant family situation. Barbara’s loneliness is physical and emotional isolation. One aspect of really well done art is when you can relate to each portrayal and see something of yourself in each character’s complexity and in that respect, this movie is successful.