Être et avoir

Être et avoir, To Be and To Have, is, like Something's Gotta Give, a title I don't get. But unlike the latter, a poorly written romantic comedy and star vehicle deserving to be soon forgotten, the French documentary leaves a deep impression. It's an incredibly touching and absorbing portrait of a teacher named Georges Lopez in rural Issoire, in the center of France, who works alone in what is called a `one-room' school. His students, the blurb says, are 4 to 11. You don't really know their ages, and since they're all together you see them as individuals rather than representatives of particular age or class levels.

The focus of To Be and To Have is, with minutest detail, upon what happens in the classroom. It stops just short of a complete portrait of the man, assuming he has some `être,' some being, outside the classroom. At a moment where he speaks of himself to the camera, he reveals that he wanted to teach and loved the classroom even as a young child. Does he really have a life outside class? Has he married? It seems not. Is he gay? Asexual? Wonderful as he is as a teacher – and surely his patient firmness makes him superb with children in a peculiarly French way -- the insistence on manners and civility, on his being called `monsieur' (a bit old fashioned, one might think, even pre-1968, pre-Seventies) – and that apparent absence of a life outside the classroom, all suggest a certain human limitation in Georges Lopez. Or you can see him as a monk, teaching as his sacred calling, and the classroom as his chapel. This limitation comes through in his insistence on guidance, rather than listening, a gap that shows in two extended private sessions with students in need of counseling -- one with two boys who got in a fight, the other with a girl who is withdrawn amid her peers – where in each case the kids barely speak up at all. The teacher's manner seems to overwhelm them, even though it's gentle and caring.

But the documentary isn't just about the teacher or his firm, dominant, infinitely patient style, fascinating though those in themselves are. It's about the children too, of course, and they emerge with radiant clarity and life. Probably the one we'll best remember is JoJo (Johan, not to be confused with Johann of the beautiful eyes, sphinxlike calm, and occasional moments of cruelty). JoJo is so fascinating because he eludes classification; and yet in a way he's a childhood everyman. He's eager and gawky. Lopez is always focusing on him, but without great effect: he eludes molding too. He seems unfocused, unable to finish coloring, or photocopying a book illustration properly; or to wash his hands to remove the mess of ink he's gotten on them, or to finish the teacher's interrogation about how high numbers go.

But while JoJo seems frail and a bit confused at times, quick to become distracted, dissolving into tears when knocked down by Johann (the teacher handles these conflicts with magnificent calm evenhandedness), during the second, later numbers drill (which comes up spontaneously on a class outing) JoJo is making a quantum leap. Where earlier in the year he could barely write the number `seven,' suddenly he is talking about thousands and billions. You realize he's just a boy – full of possibilities. And there's no telling where he'll go. Those are right who've called this film a meditation on the mysteries of childhood. It's a meditation all right. Its slow microscopic observation makes it that. It makes you ponder a lot of things: childhood, teaching, retirement; the nature of the documentary process. You realize there are no rules about how minute or how comprehensive a documentary must be; that the best ones – and this is one of the best – are certainly both.

Throughout Être et avoir there are moments that are tremendously moving, which pop up instantly without warning. Since the editing doesn't follow any logic other than the passage of time as the school year progresses from the onset of winter to the approach of summer, you may wonder how it's all going to pull together. There are even some segments showing parents helping their children with homework that are rather dull – till the poor rural parents' academic cluelessness becomes hilarious, -- and then you realize it's a bit sad. There are beautiful brief sequences of the snow, of cows, of one of the boys cooking and driving a tractor. But what is the film talking about? we may wonder. Where is it going?

Then we learn that the teacher is going to retire shortly. And since we know now that teaching is his life in a far greater sense than usual, the day this school year ends, when the students all come up and kiss the teacher goodbye on both cheeks (three kisses in a few special cases) becomes a hugely significant day. After the children leave you half expect the maître to burst into tears like JoJo when Johann knocked him down. He doesn't, but we weep a bit for him, for the children, and for our own lost childhoods. Philibert, the filmmaker, has done a magnificent job, just by being there but not getting in the way. He has shown us a world. Merci M. Philibert! Merci M. Lopez! Merci JoJo!

It's all been done before and looks so easy. Just get a group of cute little kids and a sympathetic adult prompter. Turn a hidden camera on them. Result - a sure-fire winner. And yet one is left with a nagging question - can it have been that easy when the result is something as impressive and beautifully formed as Nicolas Philibert's moving study of a village school in the Auvergne from winter through to summer? It opens with a stunning shot of cattle stoically moving about in a snow storm and continues with the progress of a school minibus as it collects young children from farms and hamlets to take them along snowy tracks to the warm security of a stone schoolhouse and their kindly and sympathetic village schoolmaster. He works alone, dividing his attention between children from four to eleven years of age and somehow succeeds miraculously in catering for their wide variety of needs. Shortly after their arrival I found a few doubts beginning to creep in on a first showing. Some of the interaction between master and pupils seemed to go on for an inordinate amount of time. When cinema adopts the role of recording the minutiae of the everyday without the discipline of the cutting scissors, as happens here when the very young children in turn write the word "Maman" and there is an inquest on each, does it not become a little like watching paint dry? And yet - if ever a film deserves patience in overcoming its initial longeurs, this is it. What these opening sequences achieve is to help us know these children as individuals and to become better acquainted with the schoolmaster as he gradually emerges as an almost saintly figure in the way he handles the problems of his charges, the two boys who fight, the girl about to go to secondary school who cannot relate to others, the boy who suddenly breaks down when he speaks of his father's illness and the tiny newcomer who cries for his mother. Such very special moments transcend what could have been an otherwise rather mundane experience; these and the sheer beauty with which the director and his cameraman record the passing of the seasons. The film concludes with the children saying goodbye to their teacher as they leave for their summer holiday. At this point I felt enriched by this brief insight into their lives. My tears were of gratitude for an experience that had touched me in so special a way.

... and say that this is one of the warmest and most accomplished documentaries of the last few years. Deceptive simplicity is not the easiest thing to pull off but here it works perfectly. The thing is that there's no way to tell people who haven't seen it that a film that spans about six months in a one-room schoolhouse in the Auvergne with teacher and pupils being rather than playing themselves is so rewarding. Winter turns into Spring, Spring becomes early Summer. That's it. The changes in the pupils are less obvious, more felt than seen. The teacher, in his last year before retirement is far less academically gifted than Mr. Chips but he is Real as opposed to the fictional Chips and both are imbued with the hard-to-pin-down qualities that make good teachers. A second viewing, about a year later found the film holding up well. 9/10

I didnt want to go and see this film. seriously. I got dragged along to see it in London as part of my media studies course, and me and my friends were determiend to get out of seeing it, any way we possibly could, and go shopping instead.

needless to say, we didnt manage it, and I'm actually pretty glad.

this was one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. coming from a family where both my parents are teaching in the same age-range as mr Lopez, this film had a certain mirror-image quality for me, which made it hit even closer to home. Being British, some of tend to look a the French as an Alien species (sorry!) and seeing a French teacher in some of the same situations as my parents of faced was amazingly poignant.

the amount of time and Effort that Lopez put into his teaching was beautiful to behold. his compassion and cool manner makes me think that just about every school in the world can benefit from a teacher like him.

In criticism, however, I do beleive that the editing was used to make it appear that Lopez remained PERMANENTLY calm. I've been with teachers in a classroom situation, and even with a class that small, its impossiblwe to keep your cool all the time. I would have appreciated some scenes of Lopez having to deal with any anger he might have occasionally faced. it might have added even more humanity to his persoanlity, and although I empathises with him, the only pure emotion we see from him is at the end, when the tears in his eyes as his class leaves are painfully apparent.

9/10.

Named as one of the best films of 2002 in the Film Comment poll of 59 international film critics, To Be and To Have provides an insight into the learning process of thirteen children, ages 4 to 10, in a one-room schoolhouse during a seven-month period. The film is a tribute to the innocence of childhood and to the dedication of their teacher, 55-year old George Lopez. Director Nicolas Philibert selected Lopez' rural schoolhouse in the Auvergne region of southeast France from a list of 300 schools. As Philibert explained: "I wanted a school with a limited number of pupils so that each child would be easily identifiable and become a character in the film. I also wanted the fullest age range possible -- from kindergarten to the final year of primary school -- to show the atmosphere and charm of these small, eclectic communities and the very specific work required from the teachers."

Filming almost 600 hours of the children's daily activities with a crew of four, Philibert allows us to re-experience the long forgotten frustrations of learning how to trace letters, express our feelings verbally, count until we run out of numbers, and get along with our classmates. Mr. Lopez has taught in the same school for twenty year and has a unique ability to simply be with and respect children for who they are and what they say. He is a model of patience and an example of how to listen without making moral judgments or instant evaluations. He says of the teaching profession, "It takes time and personal involvement and the children return that again and again." Most of the children come from families who are not well educated but the film shows the parents struggling to do their best to solve the mysteries of their child's homework. To Be and To Have is also filled with humor as in a sequence when two very young students are fighting a losing battle with a photocopier and when a student insists on using the word "pal" instead of "friend". Much time is spent observing a pre-schooler named Jojo with a very typical attention span. He is endearing but I would have liked a bit more exploration of Katherine who we find out at the end has a serious problem in communicating.

Mr. Lopez works closely with each child, showing sensitivity in the way he handles problems as when he asks two fighting students to imagine the effect their behavior has on others. Time and again he mediates disputes by helping children to communicate with each other as in the scene where he assists two older boys, Julien and Olivier, in understanding the reasons they got into a fight. "You were just testing each other, but then it degenerated, no?" he asks. The film begins in December with footage of snow falling on a herd of cows and continues until the following Summer. By the end we have come to know many of the students. When the teacher announces he is going to retire in another year, the emotion on his face when the children plant kisses on his cheek as they say goodbye for their vacation was felt throughout the entire audience of 800 people. To Be and To Have celebrates the dedication of teachers whose unacknowledged labors make a profound difference in the lives of our children. A film of warmth and humanity, it is the highest grossing French documentary of all time. Job well done, Mr. Lopez and Mr. Phlibert.