(Publicity image: Sony Pictures Classics)
Note: “The Class” was released in early 2009 in the U.S., but it still has no DVD release date. I’m not sure when or where it will be playing. I saw it at University of Chicago Doc Films, so your best bet may be a college film series.
The teacher movie is one of the strange class of films based purely on an occupation (the cop movie, the soldier movie, the psychologist movie). Of all these, the teacher movie has the most potential for melodrama, and it rarely disappoints in that department. From Robin Williams’ manic, Whitman-spouting madman in “Dead Poet’s Society” to Hilary Swank’s righteous, weeping martyr in “Freedom Writers”; from Ryan Gosling’s coke-sniffing social equalizer in “Half Nelson” to Morgan Freeman’s bombastic scenery-chewer in “Lean on Me” — the teacher in the teacher movie inevitably veers towards excessive emotionality.
“The Class” is not that movie. It is, by my reckoning, the most realistic teaching movie I have seen. Francois Marin (Francois Begaudeau, who also co-wrote the film) is many things, but he is decidedly not melodramatic. Sarcastic, hard-edged, a veteran with a jaded view in one of a hardscrabble middle schools in a Paris in economic and social flux, he is not an inspirational teacher. He’s a reduction of teaching to its most basic elements; to paraphrase Wallace Stevens, he is a man teaching a thing.
Unlike the aforementioned genre flicks, “The Class” is not built around a cohesive plot structure. That, of course, is how school years go. There’s no convenient fitting into a narrative structure. Each day in the film resembles a day in the normal classroom; a student who one day despises you and throws a chair can return the next with a bright smile and good morning. Instruction walks a thin line between spirited discussion and all-out war, especially in the low-income pseudo-jailhouse that these students and teachers inhabit. The students themselves, a ragged mix of the different ethnic groups now vying for the future of France, have remarkable authenticity, which probably comes out because they are non-professionals, not MTV stars.
Speaking of the building, the French name of the film is important: “Entre les Murs” translates as “between the walls,” a fitting title, since the entire film takes places within the walls of the school. If anything, it is reminiscent of “The Shawshank Redemption” — full of institution men and women, unaware of how to operate in the world outside of their natural environment. The director, Laurent Cantet, is well-versed in the art of the environmentals — from impoverished Haiti in “Vers le Sud” to smooth, cold corporate France in “Time Out (L’Emploi du temps)” — and here, the filming jostles around uncomfortably and hides in the corners of the creaky, cinderblock school.
We are spared the usual painting of backstory, because honestly, that isn’t what a teacher sees. It is notable that the screenwriter and novelist was a teacher originally, because M. Marin knows only his classroom and what he sees before him. Everything in the film is what happens in the classroom, between the walls. The movie thankfully dispenses with the peripherals in favor of the focus: the delicate balance between student and teacher.
Over the course of the film, both teacher and student repeatedly transgress this delicate balance. Take sarcasm, a tool that I use on a daily basis with my students. When M. Marin uses his trademark sarcasm to take down a student at the knees for a marginal act of disrespect, it feels arbitrary, but the damage is long-lasting. The student, Khoumba, one of Marin’s students from years past, also cannot understand the notion of boundaries between appropriate and inapporpriate, unable to understand the arbitrary borders of social conduct in her selective respect and disrespect. And yet, there they are, she and he tied together by a necessitous bond of teacher and student; they see each other every day out of compunction, rather than desire, a schedule that must be filled.
This is one in a series of minor failures and successes along the way. But what this film understands better than other teacher films is that teaching is not a triumphal march or a story of inspirational heroism. I would elaborate on plot, but as I mentioned, this is not a movie of plot. It is a movie of atmospherics, of sensation, of experience. The great frustration of teaching is that there are rarely immediate results. Change takes time, and who knows which lesson we teach today will resonate down the road? So, we continue, failing day after day, riding out the schedule, doing what we must. I quote from Richard Hawley’s classic piece on “Teaching as Failing”:
Failure — real failure — is palpable everywhere in the teaching process. We need to name it and to face it, so that we may continue. If we insulate ourselves sufficiently with defenses, we may go unhurt, but we will teach nothing, while providing students models of flight and disengagement. Acknowledging failure and acknowledging defenses, we may come to know as much about our business as the medieval scholastics knew about God: what he is not and that he is necessary.
Yes, M. Marin fails. But that does not make him a failure. That makes him a teacher.
Trailer:
P.S. Something I wanted to mention, but which didn’t necessarily fit into the review, was that I believe I understood this film better because I had the context of being a teacher. At the same time, I also understood this film better because I spoke French; there were moments I could point to as mistranslations or flubbed jokes. I wonder whether the two contexts are comparable — that is to say, does being a teacher bring more depth to the movie, or does understanding the French language and culture? I’m not sure.
You failed to mention the greatest teaching movie ever: Dangerous Minds.
I’m sorry, but the greatest teaching movie ever is, without a doubt, “High School High.”
On the other hand, I wonder how you think The Class compares to some of the finest scenes from season 4 of The Wire.
I would say that “The Wire” is a series constructed on sprawl; although its moments in the classroom can be poignant, they are merely one square of the fabric of the story. In fact, “The Wire,” if anything, is antithetical to a film like “The Class”; instead of closing off the outside world, “The Wire” shows how poverty, class and circumstance come together to influence the classroom, while “The Class” looks at the problem from one person’s perspective in the tightest of quarters.