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Uptown Magazine - Winnipeg's Online Source for Arts, Entertainment & News

April 2, 2009


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2009-04-02

The politics of the classroom

Laurent Cantet's award-winning film The Class is a thoughtful examination of the power struggle between teacher and student

B+

THE CLASS
April 2-4, 8:30 p.m. Cinematheque

Palme d'Or winner at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and an Oscar nominee for best foreign feature at this year's Academy Awards, Laurent Cantet's introspective film sets its sights on the classroom.

The picture captures the realism of the French public school system as François Marin (François Bégaudeau), a Caucasian teacher, navigates the treacherous waters of an ethnically diverse class that's unwilling to listen, learn, or do homework (though home life is consciously kept off-screen). Instead of going the inspirational-teacher route with an over-emphatic musical score, director Cantet lets scenes run blankly on for several minutes - so much so that we almost feel as if we're back in high school again.

The script, written by Bégaudeau and based on his novel, reflects his own experiences as a teacher, briefly expounding on the vagaries of the French language to a litany of uninterested students. One gets the sense that the years spent trying to articulate to the apathetic have taken their toll.

In the film, Bégaudeau's teacher asks students to represent themselves in a self-portrait. Some illustrate this task by taking photos of their families, while others less successfully dictate in monotonous 'I like' sentences. The teacher's given flak for dishing out as much as taking it, and the students make it clear that they're shucking their responsibility to engage their educator.

There's a curious lack of respect given to Bégaudeau's Marin, as he tries his hardest to make an impression by offering both encouragement and discipline, and the closing act sees Marin in danger of losing his job for behaving a bit inappropriately and speaking out of turn.

The students in the film are natural actors, plucked out of obscurity for their realistic qualities. We're able to witness their inability to express themselves completely - out of shame, shyness or self-consciousness - and how that squanders so much promise.
— Aaron Graham

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