My advice, if you want to watch Blue Car, is simple and urgent: go ahead, but DON'T READ ABOUT IT. Don’t read anyone else’s review, don’t read mine. Still, I'll try to keep the early part spoiler-free, in case I convince any skeptics that Blue Car is worth the time. After all, it was for my wife and me. We wouldn’t enjoy seeing the movie a second time, but we don’t need to. Come into it with hope, as we did; some of it will be repaid.

Blue Car is about a beautiful high-school senior named Meg who, on the downside, has family issues but, on the upside, has an English teacher, Mr. Auster, who wants to nurture her gift for poetry. Here is what is unique and good about Blue Car: it is a movie about poetry that dares to take poetry seriously, and gets away with it. Her early efforts that get Mr. Auster’s attention are erratic, interesting misfires; her later polished poem for a poetry competition is, amazingly, quite good, in a believably pained and teenaged way. A final poem that she composes very quickly has the gaping imperfections it should have, but also has her newfound skill and confidence.

Furthermore, Meg talks with the imagistic grace that makes her poetry skills believable; to a lesser extent, even her 10-year-old sister and her harried working/schooling mother do, so it’s not some mutant Lisa Simpson gene. I’m a sucker for teaching movies, and this isn’t by any means the best, but I’ve never seen a more convincing portrayal of a student _learning_ before.

As for the 40-ish Mr. Auster, David Strathairn does a magnificent job of portrayal. It’s uncomfortably obvious from the start that his interest in Meg can’t be purely advisoral, but as the Auster/Meg relationship becomes central to the plot, Strathairn gives Auster enough reserve and discomfort to make him likeable. When she breaks down in tears mid-movie, and he robotically places his arms around her for comfort, he breaks off the hug, backs away, stares at her with intent fear, stammers “You are amazingly beautiful, and you are amazingly”… and rather than finish off with the next adjective (“underage”, I assume), he turns and walks to the door. “You can stay in this classroom as long as you need to. I’ll…”, and he gestures vaguely and leaves. Well-handled, as are several other scenes of this type.

As a classroom teacher, Mr. Auster is more above-average than anything else, but as a mentor teaching Meg about poetry, he works very hard to put the focus on her, to build her confidence and her judgment rather than her reliance on him. And that, friends, is a movie worth seeing. So if you want to see it, see it! Stop reading Blue Car reviews! Rubber-stamp mine with a nice Most Helpful, there, thank you kindly. Now: Shoo! Vamoose! Andale, andale!

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So, like, this is the rest of the review. With spoilers and such.

I didn’t read Vormancian’s review until after seeing the movie: and from such snap judgments are born general advice. See, Marc, who hated this movie, doesn’t think it could have any “spoilers”. How, he asks, can you have spoilers in which the ending is outlined so clearly at the beginning, and every character ends up doing what you probably first guessed they would do? And here’s the sad part: on an A/B comparison, beginning to end, he’s pretty much right. Or worse, he’s more right the more you’re a cynic. The entire basis of my disagreement with him is about the middle, which luckily is the vast majority of the film.

What I think goes right, most importantly, is that David Strathairn hijacks the film. David’s already played a child-molester at least once, on Dolores Claiborne, and it’s not a role a guy wants to get typecast in. It’s obvious from the start that Mr. Auster’s attraction to Meg will have to be resolved, and I have absolutely no problem with that; all I wanted was a resolution that didn’t make teacher look like a greaseball, and David does his best for me. We live in a world where sexual self-restraint, marital fidelity, and good judgment catch people by surprise, at least in movies (what that says about real life is a separate issue). I wanted that surprise. David’s awkwardness and distance, and the cold wisdom of Mr. Auster’s advice, set up hope. Not all of that hope will be knocked down, although more than enough will.

Still, opportunities are missed. Meg learns from a friend that Auster has been working for years on a novel. She asks him to read to her from it; his first reaction is to look startled and trapped. Now, last time they met he’d conducted a great teaching moment: she’d submitted a new poem, “Blue Car”, that he’d specifically asked her for, and he’d read it in front of her, and she’d asked him for an opinion. “What do _you_ think of it?”, he’d volleyed back; it took some realistic back-and-forth before his standoff ultimatum “Come back when you know whether it’s good”. And as she walked out of the classroom, she’d turned back and said “There’s one line that I like”. “Which?”, he asked, and she recited it. “And the rest?”, he’d asked: “I could go deeper”, she admitted.

So when she asks to read his novel, and he doesn’t want to, why can’t he just say that he relies on _his_ own judgment, too, and his novel isn’t any good yet? That would be fine: as a (part-time) teacher, I’m happy to admit there's bits of truth in the cliché “Those who can’t, teach”. It doesn’t mean they won’t teach brilliantly, after all. Why does Mr. Auster have to read her some flowing lines of romantic poetry? Why do they have to be lines stolen from Rainer Maria Rilke? Why does his book turn out, in the end, to be a sham? It’s even worse than what Blue Car does to the teacher/student relationship: at least that made sense.

There are little elements to the movie I like, mind you. The mother/Meg relationship is nicely done, in my opinion, and I like the mom’s powerless love in the face of her 12-hour-day job and night school. Or, there’s a “delinquent” boy Meg meets who, in Vormancian’s review, can be instantly identified as trouble because “(1) this is a stupid movie and (2) he wears a leather jacket”. But personally I like the boy’s teenage rationalizations of his behavior (“if I steal something today, I'll feed a hungry person tomorrow; it’s about creating balance”). I like that the boy gets Meg in far less trouble than she herself, worried about her mom’s poverty, has already created. And what’s wrong with troublemakers wearing leather jackets? Teenagers do self-identify with their choices of clothes. Hell, so do grownups.

Agnes Bruckner, as Meg, is a little passive, but entirely convincing, and a worthy foil for the teacher/student tension. No, I don’t know why someone that lovely is going around getting roles as “Agnes Bruckner”. Once upon a time, Archibald Leach had the good sense to call himself “Cary Grant”, and everyone knew “Marilyn” was better than “Norma Jean”, but now… I don’t know who’s minding the switch with today’s kids. I know actors these days are way too good-looking at way too young an age, and Emily VanCamp has a lovely name and Michelle Trachtenberg’s is fine and Liza Weil’s is just okay enough to get a pass on sentimental attachment grounds, but “Alexis Bledel”? “Bethany Joy Lenz”? Say what? I think my point was that Bruckner is a fine young actress who adds to Blue Car. She is and does.

What we have is a first feature written and directed by a woman, Karen Moncrieff. Every female character over age 10 is given depth by Ms. Moncrieff, while she fatally betrays the depth of the major male character. A rookie mistake, but I think Blue Car was a promising start for her. It leaves a sour aftertaste, but as a movie about poetry, it’s easily the best I’ve seen.

Recommended: Yes