From the Archives: The Nanny Diaries promises uncertain college students life after graduation
By Karyn Gehrls
The Nanny Diaries was a satisfying film experience. Based on the novel by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, The Nanny Diaries introduces a college graduate in Business, Annie, who does not know what she wants to do with her life. She becomes lost, to say the least, and takes on a nanny job, at first, as a mistake, but then finds herself.
Through many hardships, misunderstandings, and painful experiences, she finds her true self and decides to go to graduate school in Anthropology.
The most interesting part of the movie is the way it is shaped and introduced. The entire duration of the film is made to be a graduate school application. It is called a study of human behavior, specifically the behavior of the Upper East Side mother and the nanny.
With museum exhibits introduced in the beginning, the film demonstrates, even though the audience does not know it, Annie's interest in Anthropology before they even find out that she minored in it in college.
Scarlett Johansson plays Annie, a confused yet very observant nanny to Grayer, played by up-and-coming child actor Nicholas Art. The performances of all the actors in the movie were very believable. Laura Linney plays Mrs. X, Grayer 's mother, and becomes this deceitful, spoiled woman from the Upper East Side who used to be a hard-working woman. Now, she spends more time at a spa thinking about her troubled marriage than spending time with her only son.
Paul Giamatti plays a supporting role as Mr. X, a womanizing and not-soattractive, businessman who would rather spend his time in Chicago with his secretary than spend time with his own son as well. Grayer now must spend time with Annie, the nanny, whom he comes to love deeply.
Everything, from the editing to the music to the cinematography was all very well-done.
During certain parts of the film, the filmmakers inserted several dream sequences to show Annie's struggle to make a decision. These dream sequences were made out to be very different than the real-life sequences to show the audience they were not in real life anymore, that they were in Annie's brain instead. Smart move, movie men!
Overall, the movie was very entertaining. Not only did it seem the audience was taken into this "other" world of nannydom, it showed what a lot of college students are afraid of after graduation: life.
