Cory Finley's Bad Education (2020)

 This is the time of year when movie ten-best lists are emerging.  I do look at these lists to see what I may have missed during the year and try. to some extent, to fill in the gaps.  In most cases the contemporary films I haven't seen aren't any better than the ones I have, most of them looking as though D.W. Griffith had never lived.  I did find an exception this year, however, on Richard Lawson's (of Vanity Fair) list:  Bad Education.  This is film is playwright Cory Finley's second film (his first was Thoroughbreds in 2017, which I haven't seen); it's a beautifully structured film successful both as a human drama and as implied criticism of many of our questionable educational practices.  It takes place on Long Island in 2004 when school superintendent Frank Tassone (Hugh Jackman) and accountant Pam Gluckin (Allison Janney) stole more than eleven million dollars from the school's budget, mostly to buy luxury houses and cars and take exotic vacations.  

The film was written by Mike Makowsky, who had been in middle school in Roslyn when the scandal broke, and photographed by Lyle Vincent, whose garish color cinematography captures Long Island as effectively as Janney's accent.  The real heroine of the story is school newspaper reporter Rachel Bhargava (Geraldine Viswanathan), who exposes Tassone's embezzlement even after he threatens her when she inadvertently knocks on the door of his Park Avenue apartment, an address where a supposed supplier had received money.  The key to Tassone's success as an embezzler was his ability to recruit good teachers that helped get students into Ivy League colleges which, in turn, made the school district popular and helped hike the cost of houses, the head of the school board being a real estate wheeler-dealer.  That high SAT scores and admission to an Ivy League school are positive symbols of an education is what leads to scandals such as the recent briberies in California and this film is an example of where such distorted views can lead and the damage that results.