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The Paper Chase

7/8/2016

24 Comments

 

C+
2.24

​A first-year law student at Harvard Law School struggles with balancing his coursework and his relationship with the daughter of his sternest professor.

Directed by James Bridges
Starring Timothy Bottoms, Lindsay Wagner, John Houseman
Initial Review by Drew Landry


Picture
The Paper Chase was a classic film concerning a law student trying to succeed in a class with a stern professor.  James Hart – the protagonist – never understood the antics of his contracts professor and Harvard legend Charles Kingsfield.  Hart’s frustration was prevalent to the point he constantly complained about the shrewd professor to the point of ad nauseam.  Even his lady friend, whose shocking identity was revealed, grew weary of his fussing.  To her, it was almost an obsession and his inability to subside it pushed her away from him.

​
The Hart/Kingsfield dynamic was the film’s core part but there were other peripherals that need mentioned.  One was the study group.  Having been party to several study groups, they are beyond ridiculous.  Despite that, a particular social, pecking order exists and watching the numbers of Hart’s study group dwindle was like watching a rock group break up.  Always someone pushing too hard, acting too arrogant, or being too obnoxious for the other members to handle, consequently making the group of six or seven shrink to three.  How beneficial was the group?  That is hard to say.  Anything beyond post hoc ergo propter hoc would be tough to reason and even that, in and of itself, is a fallacy.

Another peripheral dynamic was with his lady friend.  They met in an unusual way and Hart could not shake the feeling she gave him.  The way the actors interacted, however, was not exactly pure chemistry.  Yes, viewers saw typical relationship problems but the portrayal was not on – screen magic so it was difficult to understand his feelings toward her.

It is important to mention aspects from Hart’s perspective but the film was not about Hart.  It was about Kingsfield and his teaching style.  Kingsfield ran the classroom in every way that it should be today; strict yet engaging, all the while holding his class to the highest of standards and treating his students with little regard. 

The students even sought after his approval.  They wanted to show off for him and hoped he praised their effort.  While this method is somewhat arrogant, it motivated students to achieve.  That style reminded me of two my most challenging professors.  One was the legendary University of Evansville political science professor David Gugen.  He was my Yoda and constantly challenged me.  I needed his approval and the only way to get it was to work incredibly hard.  Once attained, the onus rested on the student to stay at that level and it was a difficult but worthwhile task. 

To me, Hart’s perspective on Kingsfield was relatable.   

I am sure we all had that one teacher/professor who pushed us to the edge to learn.  I emulate Gugen, and other influences, in my teaching style.  The Paper Chase made me appreciate Gugen more than I did when I was a student.  That may be its greatest success.

While it helped me remember my favorite professor, it was not the most fantastic film.  Hart whined more than a melodramatic teen and the story in and of itself could be a complete overdramatic illustration of law schools.  Those aspects kept it out of the A range.  Its solid parts were obvious throughout the film.  Definitely rewatchable.

Grade: B
24 Comments
Bryan
7/8/2016 10:05:55 am

Holy studying montage! The main character James Hart is seemingly having a breakdown over his law professor and his girlfriend, the professor's daughter - but I don't see it. Supporting character Kevin nearly commits suicide and Willis Bell (I think) throws 800 pages out of his window - those are breakdowns. What James Hart is going through happens at 19 where your're sorting things out, in love, and incredibly worried about professors. His immaturity does not make a great movie. I would have much rather followed the surrounding cast through their troubles. Maybe director James Bridges should take a page out of Wake in Fright if he really wants the main character to have a breakdown.

A few other points...

*I love Susan line on what lawyers (and I'd add econs) do... "The endless defining of irrational human behavior into tight little patterns. People are not rational. People are irrational."

*Graduate student housing at Harvard was dorm living with group showers and one phone for the floor. They survived, mostly thrived, and learned. It's a shame that colleges (and hospitals) have turned into hotels today and in return raised prices astronomically.

*Quick question, Kevin has the photographic memory for memorizing facts. What job would have been best for him then? What would he do now?

I'm at a C on this one.

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Drew
7/8/2016 03:06:42 pm

Kevin said he would make a great bartender....

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Bobby
7/16/2016 09:13:20 pm

Writer, politician, entertainer would probably be some of the better professions...

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Admin
7/8/2016 10:10:36 am

Notified for comments.

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Joe link
7/9/2016 01:00:10 pm

C+

Damn it, I nice response all written up on my phone then I accidently closed the browser. Lost some good shit that I refuse to rewrite. Long story short, Hart is a neurotic tool. His obsession with impressing Professor Kingsfield is a pathetic adventure in unoriginality. His supposed scholastic endeavour is about as the furthest thing from learning that I could imagine. Of course, that is the point of the film, as evident by Hart literally throwing his grades into the ocean in the closing scene.

Drew, you seem to praise this dynamic of learning, which as a teacher deeply concerns me. The film portrays the toxic nature of learning for the sake of impressing another. Yet, you praise this dynamic. I feel like you missed the point.

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Drew
7/9/2016 05:52:11 pm

I don't endorse that kind of learning per se. I never said students should learn that way or that was good for me to work hard to impress Gugin. To be honest, Erin Hottie Hottel sitting in the front row of his classes was probably the only thing(s) that ever impressed him.

But Gugin motivated me. I am sure why but he did. Maybe it was to impress him; I don't know. Other professors like Gahan, Ciscell, Bellamy, Kirkwood, Milner, and Dion also motivated me but Gugin struck a chord with me.

The kind of teaching style I wholeheartedly endorse is one of motivation. How the students take the motivation is on them.

As far as me missing "the point" is concerned, it was a matter of perspective. I saw it as Kingfield's film while you saw it in a different light. That is perfectly fine.

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Joe link
7/9/2016 10:07:46 pm

Ahhhhhhh, that makes more sense, now, in respects to the motivation.

My biggest rebuttal for it being Long field's movie is that he's a relatively uninteresting characters. There's no character arc to speak of. He's introduced in the opening dialogue and there's no deviation from that point on. He is who he is.

Shane
7/18/2016 01:41:31 pm

I agree with Joe that it's not Kingsfield's movie. I think he's a device and not a person. He is unmoving and a machine. The only evidence of his humanity is that he has a daughter.

He's something for our main character and other characters to play off of. He allows our characters to develop themselves. The movie is about Kingsfield like Sleepless in Seattle is about Seattle (probably).

Sean
7/10/2016 12:42:28 am

Meh.
Paul Rudds uncle is as ok as Hart. Bell was an annoying douche- credits tell me his name is Craig Richard Nelson. If I cared to write more I'd refer to him as Not Coach.
There wasn't much to like about any of these characters. Hart was the most like a decent and relatable person but his neurotic obsession with his teacher cancelled that out. They spent a lot of time on the love story but as was mentioned no chemistry was evident on screen. Everything we saw would point to Hart pacing by the mailbox waiting for his grades but suddenly we expect him to not care at all and cheer for that?
Again- meh

C

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Sean
7/10/2016 12:59:25 am

Oh and clapping for
The teacher is dumb. And Hart is the only person who chooses to swim Butterfly laps for relaxation

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Bryan
7/10/2016 09:02:24 am

Good call on butterfly. What a weirdo.

Bobby
7/16/2016 09:14:01 pm

I'd rather clap for a teacher than a movie... as least he's there to appreciate the applause.

Shane
7/18/2016 01:38:35 pm

We had one professor who everyone always clapped for. He was fantastic.

Jon
7/13/2016 01:49:02 am

I can imagine why Professor Drew picked this movie. One day, I'm sure he hopes that a fawning student will find Drew's notes from when he was a student and pore over them long into the night, marveling at every word. Maybe Drew will then crush that adoration by pretending to not know the student's name, or maybe after hundreds of students, he'll have long ago stopped trying to remember anyone at all. Drew speaks well to what most appealed to him, what Hart calls 'the chain of wisdom' that Gugen learned from whoever inspired him, passed onto Drew, and Drew potentially passes onto someone else. If Drew wants to build on that chain, hopefully there's a higher ratio of profundity to nonsense than James Bridges' film. The Paper Chase makes an effort to add to the chain of cinematic wisdom, but it should've made its link with steel instead of tin foil.

This just isn't a movie that inspires passion, so I'm going to bang this out as perfunctorily as possible. I liked the dynamic of the study group and the winnowing process of a weeder class from a period of time before grade inflation and students-as-customers. I liked how John Houseman's Kingsfield never calibrates his performance, since the movie is about how Timothy Bottoms' Hart sees him and his complete misjudgment of their relationship. There's some smaller things I appreciated, but the knocks against the Paper Chase are pretty elemental. I never, for a second, bought the relationship between Hart and Lindsay Wagner's Susan. He is utterly charmless in their first few meetings, and it doesn't make any sense why she would continue to spend time with him. Also, what's the lesson here? Hart gets the girl and the grades and he's conflicted about that? He kills it his first year in law school and he'll continue being slightly less single-minded, maybe. Who cares?

It's possible that The Paper Chase is just supposed to be a bunch of anecdotes from law school and that's why the basic structure is so weak. I quoted the line earlier on purpose, and there's definitely good stuff here, but here, we have a classic C, general meh.

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Joe link
7/13/2016 08:53:22 pm

This movie does not age well. At all.

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Bobby
7/16/2016 07:41:39 pm

I watched this movie
For about thirty minutes
Then I fell asleep

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Bryan
7/16/2016 08:57:20 pm

I stopped grading based on me sleeping. Too many outside factors an average movie can't overcome. The last two movies I've seen that have kept me awake past where I would typically fall asleep were Fury Road and The Big Short.

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Bobby
7/16/2016 09:22:13 pm

Yeah, I didn't give it a grade there, since I didn't finish it...

although, I sort of wish I didn't.

Bobby
7/16/2016 09:15:37 pm

I watched this movie
The entire way through now
My grade: C-

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Shane
7/18/2016 01:33:29 pm

This movie is a bit of a challenge to view objectively since it's a shared experience with me being so recently a law school graduate. Traditionally, movies about such specific topics are gonna go one of two ways:
1. They'll fudge up the details to make it more friendly for a broader audience. This usually annoys "experts" in the topics' field. For me, this is the TV show Daredevil, which shits all over what the legal field actually looks like.
2. They maintain accuracy and the mundane details of that topics daily workings bore you to sleep, but they make the "experts" happy.

The Paper Chase decided on approach number 2 and they delivered on the boring part. Then again, how exciting an any movie be where the apex of action is a montage studying scene? This film just takes too long to get anywhere and just kind of draws in a bunch of subplots. For example, I'm still not sure of why it was important that homeboy had a photographic memory. It sounds like some 70's pseudoscience stuff that the filmmaker was just in to. Removing that and other superfluous plot lines and you could easily get this movie into the 90 minute ranger, which is where it needed to be.

Outside of the slow pacing, which is typical in a lot of 70's movies, our protagonist is hard to root for. He's a self-absorbed dick. I'm fine with our protagonist being a dick, but there have to be consequences before he can get redemption. Here, Susas continues to give him multiple chances for no reason at all. He completely dismisses her for much of the movie, but she's always ready to take him back. Perhaps its a sign of the times type thing, but it just doesn't wear well with age.

The only redeeming quality for most viewers would be Kingsfield. John Housemen gives us a wonderfully unemotional character that is less of a person and more of a symbol. Kingsfield is a character as much as New York City is a character in a rom com. He's there not to interact with, but as mirror that the characters bounce off of and expose themselves and their character traits. He represents the system rather than a single professor.

The other goods, for me, are the accurate portrayals of law school. It's unnerving how similar it was then compared to now. I thought there would be bigger differences. But, it makes sense. Law school is built mostly around the people that attend. The culture is derived from the students and people who go to law school tend to be self-absorbed and hyper-competitive. We see this in the study group where the structure completely breaks down because most believe they have the answers and don't need help. They weaponize a study group to tear down others.

I know people like this. I went to law school with them. Most people, of course, aren't that bad. But they exist and are easy to find. They seem so smart and on point, full of opinions and bluster. I'm tankful that I had mentors who told me these assholes are full of shit. They don't know anything and are guessing. The guy with the 800 page outline is definitely someone I went to law school with. If you didn't know better, you'd think an 800 page outline is impressive. But its the exact opposite. 800 pages means you're unable to digest the material distill it down into something concise. It means you're just repeating facts rather than knowing what the facts mean. Those guys who pulled that shit crashed hard that first semester.

The drive against caring about grades or caring about life also hits home. I wanted good grades, but wasn't willing to kill myself for them. Everything is a curve and the returns are marginal. It was more important for me to develop relationships than it was to get good grades. After all, no one ever asks about your grades. Within this movie club, there are two of us who worked/have worked in higher education with a GPA lower than 3.0.

Grades. Don't. Matter.

I spent 3 years of school having my friends worry about my general aloofness about assignments only to be the first one with a job. And I got my job because I play softball. I like that the character struggles with this as its probably the only interesting conflict in law school.

Finally, they do a pretty good job of breaking down class structure and the Socratic method. Students really are mainly anonymous. Professors really do move on from question to question until you're wrong. That's the point of law school. To make you understand there are no right answers. There are only well and poorly argued opinions. The whole goal is to fit the world into a grey area.

Getting these and other nuances saved this movie for me.

B-

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Lane
7/18/2016 09:41:26 pm

Let’s dispense with the film portion of this review quickly: boring movie, slowly plotted, character based, well acted, etc. etc. The problem with this movie is that it wasn’t about anything important, per se. I’m going to be a pretentious here and offer a Marxist reading of this film, which is that this is a “petite bourgeoisie” film—this was made when most of America thought law was a noble profession, and that lawyers were interesting, and that attending somewhere like Harvard Law was a sure fire way to get into the upper middle class. This was pre “Law and Order” and John Grisham; this was before banking and consulting supplanted law and medicine as the quickest way up the economic ladder. But the world has changed. Lawyers today just aren't the same as lawyers thirty years ago. No offense, Shane.

My class-based critique of the film: C+

Okay…now to the interesting parts (to me, anyway). There are a few things that I have no right to have an opinion on, but that I hold strong opinions on anyway. The first is on the caffeine content of espresso (coffee is MUCH more caffeinated, and so if you claim to be “wired” because of a latte, I know you’re BS’ing). The second is legal education. I didn’t attend law school, but I have an ex-spouse who did, and for about three years of my life all my close friends were law students or lawyers and so law was all we talked about. And thus I often have opinionated things to say on “black acre” and habeas corpus and how in most states spouses are still obligated to testify against each other. So, here are my opinions on law school:

Law school is educationally unique in that it is the only branch of higher education that retained the Socratic method long after it has been dispelled as an educationally un-useful method of learning. The reason that law schools could hang onto this method of education is because they have remained the most economically profitable sectors of higher education along with importing foreign exchange students and distance learning. As long as you pay the university bills, you don’t have to change or be effective.

Little does it matter that what you actually encounter in the legal world has little comparison to what you encounter in law school. Shane sums it up: law school (current and former iterations) teaches students much more about how to outline and withstand pressure from mean-sounding people; much less about how to actually negotiate the world.

I have so much more to say, but you have to buy me a drink first. That’s all I got.

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Shane
7/19/2016 12:29:21 am

As an attorney who sports Wolverine chops to work every day, no offense taken. I am a man of little pride.

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Cooker
9/28/2016 01:30:15 pm

Lectures and study groups, lectures and study groups. Law school and tests and stuff.

I did enjoy the Paper Chase, although I haven’t read the book, and I’m curious as to how the TV series went that lasted for four seasons after originally being cancelled after one. Well-acted movie, but very slow. John Houseman gives a great performance (I believe he won that year’s Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor) as Professor Kingsfield.

I don’t know what else to say. This movie was a few months ago. B-

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JR
10/11/2016 05:12:59 pm

Absolutely brutal to watch, not a bad movie

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