HIGHER LEARNING
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1995 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Omar Epps, Kristy Swanson, Michael Rapaport, Ice Cube, Laurence Fishburne, Tyra Banks, Jennifer Connelly. Screenplay/Director: John Singleton.
When I learned that John (BOYZ N THE HOOD) Singleton was making a film about issues of race and gender on college campuses, I was intrigued and optimistic. Though POETIC JUSTICE was a misfire, BOYZ showed that Singleton could tell a story, and after nearly ten years around Stanford, one of the nation's hotbeds of multicultural experimentation, I knew that there were many stories to tell. HIGHER LEARNING shows that Singleton recognized that fact as well; unfortunately, he tried to tell them all in one movie. It's an ambitious but unfocused effort which is admirable for its balanced perspective but leaves critical characters as mere representations of the stereotypes it seems to be challenging.
HIGHER LEARNING follows three freshmen at fictional Columbus University. Malik (Omar Epps) is an African-American track star who is challenged by the incendiary anti-establishment views of sixth-year senior Fudge (Ice Cube) and by the more moderate opinions of his political science professor (Laurence Fishburne); Kristen (Kristy Swanson) is a Southern California blonde who is drawn to a lesbian upperclassman (Jennifer Connelly) after an acquaintance rape; Remy (Michale Rapaport) is a white male from Idaho whose desire to fit in somewhere leads him to a group of white supremists. The truce between these students and their respective factions is an uneasy one at best, but it explodes into violence when a conflict between Malik and Remy goes over the edge, drawing the entire campus into it.
For fully half of its running time, HIGHER LEARNING appears to be headed in the right direction. Unlike contemporaries Oliver Stone and Spike Lee, Singleton does know how to present challenging and controversial subject matter without shouting at the top of his lungs in every frame. In a Stone film, the hero's two mentors would be manifestations of Good and Evil; Singleton, on the other hand, makes both Fudge and Professor Phipps smart and sensible characters, leaving the audience to draw its own conclusions. It doesn't hurt that both roles are played by magnetic screen presences. Ice Cube has true star potential, a powerful personality and a fine actor, and he keeps Fudge from being simply a spouter of dogma. Laurence Fishburne's Phipps doesn't really need a West Indian accent, but he shows a genuine concern for Malik, and also keeps his speeches from sounding didactic. Malik's storyline is the most carefully plotted, and Omar Epps' fine performance as the young man weighing two views of being black in America makes it the most interesting to watch.
But Singleton fails to give his other two principles the same kind of depth. Kristy Swanson shines in early scenes which show her trying to fit in with other girls and learning to express her own point of view in Phipps' class. Then, as Kristen's sexual experimentation becomes the focus, Singleton pulls back, and never tries to get inside her head after a love scene in which she is alternately with Jennifer Connelly's Taryn and Malik's gentle roommate (Jason Wiles); both relationships are sadly under-developed. Michael Rapaport's Remy has almost identical problems, beginning as a lost soul and ending up a crazed skinhead. His story could have been an opportunity to examine why real, intelligent young people feel so threatened in a multi-cultural society, but he's pushed so far to the fringe that he becomes a cartoon.
The problems with those two characters are representative of what is most wrong with HIGHER LEARNING, particularly in its second half. While Singleton seems to want us to "unlearn" stereotypical perceptions (as his none-too-subtle coda informs us), it is exactly stereotypes that he traffics in. The feminist character is an earnest lesbian, the frat guy is a rapist, the campus security guards are posturing racists, every African-American male is angry and the one Sensitive White Male is a long-haired bohemian type. Once the "sieg heil" shouting Hitler youth take center stage, it becomes clear that Singleton has eschewed examining the complexities of the way young people learn to interact at a university in exchange for an operatic, hiss-at-the-bad-guys kind of drama. HIGHER LEARNING is awash in good intentions, but too often it's terribly simplistic, taking a story which should have been about the shaping of minds and reducing it to a matter of who's got the guns.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 college credits: 5.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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