Glaschu

"School" is a thoroughly enjoyable and captivating work. In the same manner as Ken Burns' documentaries, you feel that you have traveled through periods of history with key or typical personalities of those times. Very well made.

This musical adaptation of the tragic life of 19th-century Québec poet Émile Nelligan inspired me to go out and learn more about his life and touching poetry -- surely one of North America's brightest, but brief lights as a writer.

The production's writer interweaves well the story of the tender, yet independent young artist and a nationalist message; Émile and his mother persevere in the face of an oppressive, personality-squashing father.

The theme music is still memorable for me, even nine years after seeing it. Well-acted stage performances particularly for the characters Nelligan and his mother, Émilie.

Vive le Québec _ _ _ _ _!

Would the film have lost any profits had it included some Gaelic dialog for the sake of accuracy and reality? There might have been couple of mumbled words in Gaelic at some point, but they were easily overlooked.

The fact that the majority of Scots involved in this history would have been Gaelic speakers is strangely absent from the film. Even the writers of the Indiana Jones fictional stories made sure that realistic dialog with subtitles peppered the script to give an air of realism.

This story is one of freedom from oppression. The people's right to use their own language was one the things that was eventually taken from them. It might have been important therefore to show the audience that they actually had their own language.