Jack Marcus (Clive Owen) is a moody but extraordinary English teacher at Croyden, an elite New England prep school for students who have high hopes of getting into the best universities in America. Jack is in love with words and is constantly sharing their origins. The other teachers, except his good friend Walt (Bruce Davison), have grown tired of his constantly trying to get them to play word games.
Once a rising literary star as a celebrated poet, Jack has been blocked for years and drinks far too much in a vain attempt to hide his despair. His students are forced to listen to his diatribes against the emptiness of social media and the futility of their obsession with good grades. At one point, he even calls them "droids."
Everything seems to be going downhill for Jack until a new teacher, Dina Delsanto (Juliette Binoche), an Italian-born abstract painter, arrives on the scene. She tells her class that she's "not the kind of teacher you're going to come back to visit when you're all grown up, with a box of chocolates and a Hallmark greeting card." This woman has spunk, and Jack's sagging spirit is revived as soon as he meets her.
Dina teaches the school's honor art program and is relentlessly critical of the artistic creations of her students, convinced that she can spur them on to greater achievement. She does choose to mentor a gifted girl, Emily (Valerie Tian), who is being bullied by a male classmate, probably because she, too, is fighting a battle. Dina has come to the area because her rheumatoid arthritis has flared up and made everything very difficult for her, from holding a paintbrush to opening a pill jar. Still, she keeps finding new ways to get paint on her canvases.
The veteran Australian filmmaker Fred Schepisi is at the helm of this romantic comedy that provides us with plenty of insights and epiphanies about love and the ways in which the creative process can be revived by soulmates. When Jack learns that Dina's nickname is "The Icicle," he decides to do everything he can to break through the armor she uses to protect herself from emotional involvement with others.
After Jack discovers that Dina has told her students that words are "lies" and "traps," he declares that a competition be held to see whether words or pictures are more important. Is it really true that a picture is more powerful than a 1000 words? Jack and Dina are thrilled when the students rise to the occasion and create the best paintings and new words they can.
The screenplay for Words and Pictures is by Gerald DiPego who was responsible for the transformative drama Phenomenon, one of our favorite movies. This film charts the arc of the romantic relationship between two eccentric artists who are isolated in their own self-created prisons until they begin verbally sparring with each other and then move on to other levels of relationship. What they share is a passion for their arts. Owen and Binoche are charming together and able to enchant and delight us with their wit, vulnerability, passion, and love of their craft.
Special features on the DVD include an audio commentary with Director Fred Schepisi and behind the scenes of Words and Pictures.
