21 | Gordon Hall, Harvard Medical School — The Interview That Starts It All

Everything Ben Campbell does in this film traces back to a number: $300,000 in tuition he does not have, and a scholarship interview he has to dazzle his way through. The production shot at the real Harvard Medical School, 25 Shattuck Street in Longwood, where Gordon Hall sits at the head of the marble quadrangle.

The Quad is worth the trip on its own. Five buildings in white Vermont marble, finished in 1906, arranged around a long lawn with Ionic columns across the front of Gordon Hall and a broad flight of steps rising to them. It was designed to look like a temple of learning, and it still behaves like one: students cross it fast, in scrubs, carrying coffee, ignoring the architecture entirely.

That contrast is the scene. A boy with a perfect transcript climbs steps built to intimidate and is told, in effect, that being brilliant is not by itself remarkable here. Sit on the low wall along Avenue Louis Pasteur in the late afternoon, when the marble goes warm and slightly pink, and you can watch a hundred versions of him walk past you in twenty minutes.