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In this movie the central character is Annie, who is just out of college and apparently has done well and is seemingly in range to be considered for a top level entry job in finance. Behind this drive to the financial world is her mother who is more than encouraging but rather in the range of insisting that this is the better route. The movie starts off initially with mixed scenes of fantasy and reality from the museum of Natural History where every creature seems to be put in a category which then takes on it’s own life form. The movie intersperses with some mixes of fantasy but also mostly stays in the reality of this girl initially trying to get into a posh office job. Certain segments of the fantasy have a Mary Poppins like feel to it. Her initial failure in the interview is prompted by a question asking to describe herself in terms of who she is. She draws blanks on this. Slowly, she begins to feel that she will need to radicalize her choices, at least for the now, to find out some answers to that question. The other question is also whether she can still find a solid view of her talents while in the middle of the personal setback of not being able to land the hoped for job. She starts an overall retreat first in her imaginings and tries to figure out what she has in terms of options as she just wants to zone out on this constant competitive march. Sitting in Central Park, she finally concludes with various imaginary scenes that she can match what a bag lady across the way has as she images herself as a bag lady. In that moment, a little boy is in the way of a tumbling cart in the pathway by the bench, with the accident in the making precipitated by a distracted bike rider looking at an in form female jogger. As she leaps out to get the boy out of the way, she meets a new person who’s mother soon comes over the hill, and sees her with Nanny potential, while in the meantime a number of other women right there make their offers as each raises the ante. Mrs. X though, seems to be the one who will net her services and that is what happens. Anne figures she wants to do something with herself as she can’t just do nothing, and this would be a nice retreat from the relentless goals she has fallen short on yet would shelter her for now from this elusive goal of a finance career. To her credit, this is still a dive into an unknown area, and she takes this attempt seriously. She fibs to her Mom, saying she is moving out for a good bank job, of the kind she couldn’t get. As for now, she is to be called Nanny rather than her first name of Annie by word of Mrs. Hereby she seems to be moved into another category, the category of Nanny superseding her individuality. A running theme of this movie being that category takes prominence and individuality only fills in later. The Nanny job seems to come with a vow of chastity and that brings in other potential conflicts as alluring men haven’t entirely disappeared from her personal landscape. This intuitive move to taking a chance on the Nanny job brings her into another side of the world of finance. Mrs. X and her husband, seem to be all about status and it’s upkeep and Mr. X makes his way in the world of financial mergers. Success in this field becomes paramount and from this idea, there seems to be no relief offered even temporarily. Her initial introduction to the little boy she is taking care of starts out shakily. When she brings him home from school, he pulls her shorts down as she exits the elevator to the apartment door and he runs ahead into the apartment and locks the door behind him leaving her behind and exposed to an onlooker from the elevator. The amused observer exits the elevator and introduces himself to her. When he gives his name, she sees that he is very attractive but just another representation of something and someone who is slightly above her and out of her league by her own words and she zones out as he completes the introduction. He offers his help and calmly talks the boy into letting her in for now and her job as Nanny will thereby continue on Things seem to have truly bottomed out for her symbolized by this brief loss of her shorts. Her observer seems to take an initial interest in her at some level, but it couldn’t possibly be at a romantic level or so she thinks and as he introduces himself she does drowns out his name, as her retreat continues. She does tune in that he is a Harvard grad and that is enough to get her to tune out. She believes he would be out of her league even right from the get go and as great as he obviously might be, it is not her ballgame. As the character of Mrs. X progresses, we see she a taskmaster in her treatment of Nanny, but also in her treatment of everything including her own schedule. The referrals to all her status oriented meetings is a bit overdone to where we get the point times 3. Mrs. X is not unlike anyone else in that status and belongings seem to hopefully blanket security in her life, but she seems to have brought into the concept hook, line and sinker and has fallen total prey to what is in her environment and the world she is creating with it. It is interesting how Mr.X is introduced gradually to where he isn't really seen in his first couple of appearances only to emerge later to increasing foibles. Despite the wanting of everyone to be the expert reader of the Financial Times, neither her nor her husband bring into concept the wider world and what some of the needs of others way out there might be. Another theme of this movie is that the immediate environment, despite it’s seeming favor, is just too looming on the characters and they have enormous difficulty in shaking things off towards anything else and this world itself becomes cloistered in just another form of stoicism. The Nanny has cool worldly girlfriends, who are questioning her choices. She is subservient to Mrs. X’s orders, but in other scenes shows another side where she can sharply argue her position and let off some good steam. While she has made a choice that has cloistered her from previous ambitions, it seems that there are also trappings that Mr and Mrs. X have objectified, that have left them in a kind of ascetic and stoic behavior of their own with very little room for a safety valve or creative outlets that actually work. Everybody seems to be creating their own personal hideaways. In fact this higher echelon world seems to have created any number of cripples when it comes to making good old fashion hard choices or even easy choices without seeking the tenuous aid of those perpetual advisors in the waiting. The relationship of Mr. and Mrs. X has gone on the downswing, even as the are driven in a limo, he has the Financial Times right in his face blocking the outer world and her on his side rather than paying any attention to her. The doting and image oriented lifestyle doesn’t seem to provide needed coping mechanisms for relationship amendments. For Mr.and Mrs. X, the sun seems to rise and set on their own particular circumstances and there is no greater or world vision that seems to come forth. They don't seem to even round things off towards an outward projection to anything else other then status driven quotas. The competitive drive seems to turn inward for them into a type of selfishness or in also to being outright oblivious. There is no need to heed or even attempt to incorporate even momentarily anything else that isn't within the gates of their personal goals and the maintenance of them. A major thread of this movie though is that the Nanny seems to have made a more across the board conclusion that lots is out of her league and she has tumbled herself all the way or at least halfway down the ladder for just not being able to reach the highest rungs. The “ Harvard Hottie”, sees her as more worthwhile than she sees herself, and insists on a date and he is actually bringing a more hopeful view of herself than she actually holds. The Nanny however doesn’t feel totally oppressed as she relates to the difficulties involved with Mr. and Mrs. X as she also forms a tight bond of friendship with the young boy who was excellent in this movie. Both her and them have the commonality of not finding the room to make some sort of move that is going to help and finding the consistent freedom to range into the new and exciting. Mr. X as he lets loose in the office with the help of a female friend, doesn’t care about the Nanny accidentally looking in on this as she escorts the little boy to the nearest bathroom from the outside party which happened to be near the office of the now wayward husband, indicating that he was so relieved to let off the steam that he didn’t even care as what it looked like in terms of appearances. A particularly sterling later scene is where Nanny walks behind the family as they dismount from a small plane in their arrival at Nantucket Island, just accentuating that she wasn’t in some of the key loops and she really seemed like a sad sack in this moment. This is an excellent movie especially in terms of the psychology. Later in the movie she is devoid of even being able to find a phone on Nantucket as her cell phone coverage wasn't available on this posh island and this is symbolic of just how deficits can seem to mount in practical ways where the hurdles reach even into the mundane. As things begin to crumble for the Nanny in subtle ways to clear and obvious ways she all the more seems to want the reach back to some new chances which may be fading on her quickly. From her initial retreat position, the question begins to increasingly form as to what and how she could launch for herself from her position of retreat. While the backdrop of her initial failures was quite intimidating to any of her future hopes, her true options had not dwindled to nothing as she still had real talent even though the continuity of her circumstances was that she was still losing out even while some rather real unforeseen or even golden chances where potentially materializing. What might be overdone in this movie is that it seems to take more than an few shots at the financial positions and high finance jobs but the time spent on these jobs can obviously become consuming and status cues seem to abound all the more really even forming into a progression that just gets larger. People do make a fair living at some of these jobs and it wouldn’t be only this profession where crass overindulgence in status tags comes into play. But the example here is also for others that imbibe even though the profession might be different. It seems like the pecking order is found everywhere in this movie, even in a bar scene where the rich preppy boys castigate her for being only a Nanny. Yet the reality is that you can feel this in the real world in places like the wonderful city of New York, where one can easily have an identity crises without a valid business card to share. This movie hits on what is realistically there in society. Someone like the Nanny is seemingly knocked down one rung and they themselves take themselves down several more rungs only to be further helped by outsiders who do the rest of the damage. Something to think about is the damaging influence of status drives and hypercompetitive outlooks not only to those who have fallen way short, but also those who have fallen slightly short and seem to have taken the arrow just as hard. What the Nanny did in this movie, amounted to a retreat, this retreat did bring her unexpected opportunity and gave her what would have been otherwise harder to obtain vantage points. If it wasn’t retreating to being a Nanny, it could have been working in a remote corner of the world that got her yet another view and perspective that could maybe enable to launch on another basis and find another launching pad. It was worth it to humble herself a bit, for the cause, of retreat to find perspective and perhaps and hopefully perhaps renewal and a positive reach into the unknown.
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