Getting to Adulthood with Liberal Arts

 

"Life's all about finding somebody on the same page." That will be the tagline of "Liberal Arts" (2012) film that I just saw. When I like a song or film, I'll keep playing it many times. Today is my second time watching this movie, and it's becoming more inspiring for me.

Anyway, this film is about Jesse Fisher (35), an admissions officer in a university in New York. He spent his college year in Ohio (in fact Josh Radnor - the star and director comes from this state), and so out of the blue he got an invitation from Professor Peter Hoberg for his retirement ceremonial dinner. Jesse had an inspiring college years, therefore he happily said "yes" to the invitation.

Back in Ohio, Jesse met Elizabeth - Zibby (19), a charming and passionate sophomore college student. Together, they shared a lot about college life and how you will miss those time after you're graduated.

"You know what I really love about college is the feeling that anything was possible.

You seems to have infinite choices; get out of college, and everything can happen.

And then you do get out of college, life happens. Decisions get made. 

And all of the choices you haven't done; at certain point, you'll just gonna go."

Liberal arts, I assumed, refers to the music and books they talked about. Jesse majored English and Zibby majors history. Zibby was really inspired by classical music from one of the classes she took, yet Jesse is used to listen to some indie bands. And while Zibby likes to read a trilogy vampire book (I assumed it refers to Twilight saga), Jesse loves to read "heavy" literature book. The conversation between the 35 year old man and 19 year old girl was truthful and natural. Like Zibby said, "music became the mediating truce between you and me". And Jesse said, "The purpose of fictions are to combat loneliness, but spending your time with hundred pages of books; loneliness simultaneously increased and decreased."

I give a good credit for both Josh Radnor and Elizabeth Olsen (Zibby). Radnor represents himself as a geek yet sweet man, and Olsen acted naturally as a passionate college student. The movie itself had a simple story, yet good conversation so that I want to quote them, a lot :P. And I think what Jesse's thought is right. We will miss the college years; the years with fully hopes and optimistic. Yet, still don't lose the dreams after you're get out of college. Jesse was lucky enough to meet Zibby to at least inspire him to continue his chapter into adulthood and oldness. But not all people get chance like that, right? 

So then, again, I will quote again Jesse to Zibby, that "All of this are still footnotes." And from Zibby that, "Everything in life was basically improvised." Wish me luck for continuing write the chapters, while improvise the "words" and "sentences" in this head flexibly and deeply.