Critic Reviews

Mamet's incendiary writing and the potent performances are teasingly ambiguous. Though he exposes the widening gulf between the sexes, Mamet leaves the audience to find ways to explain it. That's what makes Oleanna such a powerhouse; it's a brilliant dare.

Oleanna probes deeply into some of the darker facets of human interaction, and anything with this keen an edge will cause discomfort. Three out of four "characteristic" movie-goers are likely to view this as a bad movie (too slow, too pedantic, too stilted). Oleanna, however, is no more intended for that crowd than are they for it. This film has been made for those willing to look beneath the surface to see a taut, intellectual sparring match where there is no absolute truth. For such an audience, this picture will leave an indelible imprint.

David Mamet's fascinating polemic about sexual abuse in the workplace. A college teacher confers with a coed in his office to talk about her poor work, and all hell breaks lose with accusations. What were the teacher's motives? Does the student become the pawn of a feminist study group? This is the kind of all-too-rare picture that creates conversation on the way home from the movie theater.

Mamet's layering of issues -- academic freedom, violence to women, political correctness, materialism, elitism -- is masterful, as is his use of broken dialogue -- the sentences stretch out here like a row of jagged stones.

Oleanna the movie remains faithful to the charged 1992 play in Mamet's original Off Broadway production. It features outstanding performances by a pair of expert actors. And Andrzej Sekula's beautiful cinematography firmly inserts their encounters into the musty, hallowed interiors of an Ivy League college. [04 Nov 1994, p.i34]

There's so much emotion and so many ideas in this film that it's both angering and exhilarating. The acting is fine, the writing superb, the production crisp.

At a time when a lot of very silly and terribly dangerous things are being said about sexual harassment, Oleanna sheds a remarkable amount of light on one of the major issues facing us as we struggle, both women and men, to play out our new roles. [02 Dec 1994, p.20]

Expect this straightforward, compelling adaptation to provoke just the same level of domestic debate. As ever, the writing is rich, flexible, masterly.

The first half of Oleanna, David Mamet's film of his own award-winning play about sexual harassment, is carefully calculated to annoy the hell out of you -- which it does. But after a tedious beginning, Oleanna begins to turn the screws. By the end, you find yourself taking pleasure from a brutal beating, and it leaves you rattled, downright disturbed. [11 Nov 1994, p.G4]

Oleanna is Mamet's form of intellectual hazing, and we seated in the theater are, alas, his victims. [11 Nov 1994, p.05]