Liberal Arts (2012)

Genre: Comedy / Drama

Directed by: Josh Radnor

Starring: Josh Radnor, Elizabeth Olsen, Richard Jenkins

Running time: 97 minutes

Jesse Fischer finds himself in his mid-thirties, newly single and bored with his job. One day, he gets a call from one of his former college professors and mentors asking him to come and speak at his retirement banquet. Jesse gladly accepts, since he sees the freedom of his college days as the best times of his life. During this trip back to his alma mater, he will meet a 19-year-old female student who will become attracted to him, forcing him to wonder about how he wants to live his life going forward.

Josh Radnor, of How I Met Your Mother-fame, directed this movie and played the lead role in it. In both situations, he did a very solid job. This independent film is loaded with charm. The pace is slow, but it slowly grows on you and pulls you in. There’s a big loss of innocence here, over a past being idealized, which stops you from moving forward. All of the characters felt so real, like I knew them myself. I must admit most of them reminded me of people I have met in my university days.

In a sense, Liberal Arts did hit close to home for me. The main character is about at the same as I was when I started asking myself some of those questions about getting older and letting go of the past. Real life in the adult world can be challenging, and it is a challenge that has to be faced head-on. Things were not so ideal then, nostalgia just tends to pain a rosier picture of any situation.

Overall, I really enjoyed this film. I am sure I will come around to watching it again at a later time and that I will get something else from it then. I highly recommend it.

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