Entre les murs

Whether you respond positively or negatively to The Class, it's hard to argue that it is authentic to a very great degree. This isn't some Hollywood pablum starring Sam Jackson or Hilary Swank or even Dangerous Minds. This is taken- and starring- from the horse's mouth, a teacher who taught in the more multi-ethnic areas of Paris and via Cantet's direction, and it involved me like few films about the educational system ever have. No little drama involving the students, or rather crucial for that matter, lack any significance for the audience because from the moment we enter the classroom with Mr. Marin the camera keeps an eye on the details. Nothing is left out that might make anyone, teacher or the variety of student, look less than human. No one comes out at the end of The Class looking like they've reached the top of the world, and no one's a real hero or villain. At worst (and it's a sad but very true little moment), one kid says simply to Mr. Marin at the end of the last class that nothing was really retained from the past nine months.

After seeing The Class it brought back so many memories of school; like the 400 Blows the Class reminds us how absolutely rotten it is to be a 13 to 15 year old school-kid, but unlike Truffaut's film this is about an institution and its functions right in the heart of the matter. The teacher in The Class, real life teacher François Bégaudeau, casts such a convincing portrait because he doesn't have to really "act" or try to pretend he's a great teacher. He just is. He cares about all of his students deeply, but he's also firm when he needs to and knows, for the most part, how to reach them without going too far or coddling. It's a fine line he needs to walk since the class, made up of an ethnic melting pot as the saying goes, is smart and intelligent, and at its best we see this class participating and really in the grip of stirring conversation, even when it's about something that Mr. Marin has to handle with tact like when a student asks bluntly if he's homosexual, or when he has to deal with a young black girl who is slagging in participating in class.

It's the kind of naturalistic film-making that works because it's a synergy of the personal, of what is very well known and felt and learned about this world, and how to observe it. Some might say it's a "talking heads" movie with a pretty basic style, but the direction is wise by never getting in the way. Seeing these kids faces, and seeing the dynamic of conversations go on behind the closed doors of the faculty (some of these conversations, sometimes heated or just intense, are amazing not because of conventional dramatic power of one-side-versus-another but because of the thought put into these people, how tough decisions have to be made under certain circumstances).

It's strongest as a character piece, but also as a minor revelation into the bittersweet lot of teaching in an area like the 3/4 in Paris. There's a student who is troublesome, doesn't do work, is disruptive, but Marin wants to try and reach him. Another complication occurs due to a blow-up against a couple of chatty girls who were the "class reps" at a faculty meeting, and it sets a small chain of events that emphasizes chiefly how untenable the situation is and at the same time why it shouldn't be. This most major chunk of the film, about the student's possible expulsion, is one thing that makes The Class become even more absorbing than before, but it should be pointed out that from scene to scene nothing is left to chance. The cinema verite approach makes things move emotionally but unsentimentally; nothing is left for us to see these characters as what they are, which makes it so rewarding and heartbreaking when "things" happen as they do in movies. At one point something seemingly minor is revealed- a Chinese student, learning French little by little, may lose her mother to deportation. Not minor, it's all apart of another school day. A+

Best movie I've seen since No Country For Old Men. And you won't hear these two titles mentioned together too often.

The greatest accomplishment was in re-creating, in naturalistic documentary style, well....a classroom. And although it's almost half a century since I participated in such an environment, it seems not an awful lot has changed (well, apart from the total disrespect shown by many of the children towards their mentor). They were all there, mouthy, loud, quiet, bright, stupid. And real, or so it appeared.

Dead Poets Society it ain't. Remarkably free from schmaltz, the film traces a reasonably undramatic class year, with its group dynamics, teacher cock ups, mutinies - pupils that is - with a very small sprinkling of what is being taught academically. The result should have been fairly prosaic and I suppose it was, but I was transfixed by the skill of the players the art of the director and the total ordinariness of the people being so brilliantly portrayed. A terrific achievement by all.

At the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, two movies were able to give viewers a vivid glimpse of the very real social context they dealt with. One was the Italian crime drama Gomorra, based on a non-fiction bestseller about the Camorra's dealings. The other, which received the coveted Palme d'Or (although Gomorra is a tad more riveting), is Laurent Cantet's The Class (the original French title translates as Between the Walls), which some described as the new Dead Poets Society for obvious reasons. The comparison is legitimate but a bit weak, mostly because The Class focuses less on the Greeek tragedy structure typical of school-set dramas. Instead, it gives an incredibly accurate idea of what really goes on in an average school class.

Cantet's film is based on the eponymous book by François Bégaudeau, a former teacher who decided to inaugurate his writing career with a memoir of sorts recounting his experiences in a middle school in a Parisian suburb. Not surprisingly, when word of a cinematic adaptation came out, Bégaudeau wanted to be involved, contributing to the screenplay and taking on the lead role, virtually playing himself.

Well, not really: there's a degree of fiction in his character, at least in the fact that his last name is Marin. Everything else is spot-on, though: he gets along with his colleagues, has an intelligent teaching plan and is generally considered a good French teacher. Still, that doesn't mean there aren't problems in the class, especially when most of the 13-year old kids in there are foreign (Moroccan, Chinese, etc.). Situations range from a new student struggling to fit in to troublemakers refusing to pay attention, and it looks like some of them might not make it to the end of the academic year.

The magic of The Class is of course that it doesn't feel like a movie, but like something real, tangible - a slice of life, if you may. This is because Cantet prepared the film by selecting thousands of real students for the various parts and then going through a year-long improvisation exercise with those who made it to the final cut. In this case, though, "improvised" doesn't equal loads of swearing like in Judd Apatow's body of work (even if some of the lingo used by the kids is on the stronger side), but things people say and think when they're going through that delicate period of their life. There isn't really a point in talking about performances, save for the adults, who are nonetheless teachers in real life. These people, particularly the young ones, aren't acting, they're living. And that is a beautiful thing to behold.

It is said that movies and life do occasionally merge. Few examples are closer to the truth than The Class: it's not a biopic, it's not a documentary. It's a lesson.

It is not often that you come across a movie that has as its lead actor, the very writer of the novel on which the film is based. Laurent Cantet's intriguing film "The Class" has in its lead role of the class teacher, the novelist and co-screenplay-writer Francois Begaudeau. That's only the first surprise the film pulls on the viewer.

If you went to into the film theater without knowing much about the film you are likely to think you are watching a documentary. That's the second surprise—it is not a documentary.

The film is apparently a semi-autobiographical story of the novelist and lead actor Begaudeau. Begaudeau himself was primarily a school teacher before he morphed his own life into a novelist, journalist, and an actor. But wait a moment. Even director Cantet's parents were teachers. Therefore, it is not surprising that the intimate knowledge of the teaching and the film-making processes get married seamlessly within the film and this contributed substantially to the film being honored as the first French film to win the Golden Palm at Cannes in 21 years!

Cantet allows the viewer to study the process of educating a fresh class of bubbly and street-smart adolescent kids in a Paris suburban school. Classroom education today in many parts of the world has evolved from the dictatorial British format where the learned teacher lectures and the student imbibes what he sees and hears. Today, teaching in progressive schools is more democratic, where the teacher allows student participation, where the student is encouraged to talk and become an integral part of the education process, contributing knowingly or unknowingly and "democratically" to the education of other students in the class just as much as the teacher. It is not without intent that one of the bright Internet-savvy kids in the film brings up the subject of Plato's "Republic" into discussion, but then the intelligent viewer is forced to recall that teaching for Aristotle's own students centuries ago was democratic and peripatetic. Begaudeau the teacher is flummoxed and that's precisely what Cantet the director of the film stresses to the viewer—the very quality and process of imparting knowledge today is dissected. Plato wanted a philosopher king to provide for the common good. He also believed democracy would just lead to mob rule, which is basically an oligarchy. Cantet appears to ask the viewer if the teacher is the Platonic philosopher king. Aristotle studied under Plato and disagreed with Plato on almost fundamentally everything. Cantet's film introduces parallels of bright adolescent kids being educated in the classroom as Aristotle would have been in Plato's class. Begaudeau teaches his students often like Plato would while adopting the peripatetic approach of Aristotle's own teaching style though confined within the four walls of the class.

The film is demanding of the viewer. The film is definitely not everyone's cup of tea.

To a casual film goer, the movie would resemble a live recording of a high-school class of boys and girls with a teacher probing the minds of his students, made up of different backgrounds, races, religions and representing various continents. There are tense moments, hilarious repartees, behind the scene meetings of teachers evaluating students, parent teacher meetings and even stocktaking of a "year gone by" in the school. The film's content can disappoint some viewers looking for conventional action, sex or heavy intrigue.

Cantet's approach to cinema is far removed from the typical Hollywood film. Yet Cantet and the screenplay writing team that included Begaudeau urge the viewer to zoom-out his/her mind from the microscopic events taking place within the confines of the four walls of class--the ethnic tensions, the psychological warfare and the social criticism--as they are equally likely to take place in the wider world outside the class, beyond the school, even beyond France. That is the beguiling aspect of Cantet's film.

The innovation apart, what is extraordinary in this film? One, the film clearly indicates the classroom has evolved from the classroom of "To Sir, with Love," or "Dead Poet's Society." Today, teaching adolescents is no longer a simple task. Students are well-aware of current social and political issues, thanks to the Internet and related technology. Teachers need to be aware of several bits of information and trivia to be on top of their class. Second, "The Class" progresses to reveal manipulative student behavior towards their teachers that British cinema revealed decades earlier to us. British films, such as "Absolution" (1978, with Richard Burton) and "Term of Trial" (1962, with Laurence Olivier) are vivid examples. Unlike the two entertaining British movies, all the action in Cantet's "The Class" is restricted to two school rooms—-the actual classroom and another room where teachers interact among themselves or with parents. Third, the film grapples with the question of the broader issues of equality within a classroom, a school and elsewhere in society. Fourth, the film is about current issues of integration of different cultures that perhaps confront Europe, Canada, and Australia more than it does in the USA. Africans and Asians are now citizens of France but do they get understood by the majority? A student Suleyman says in the film: "I have nothing to say about me because no one knows me but me."

How many teachers allow for two-way communication in a class? The film presents a growing challenge for educators of today. Can we go back to the days of Aristotle or do we prefer to learn under the teacher who "dictates"? Are we providing the turf for democracy or for dictatorships to emerge in society from the lowly classroom? This is a sensitive film meant for film-goers expecting more than frothy entertainment. The two final shots, somewhat similar, of the film graphically (and silently) capture the entire case of the film that preceded those shots. That was truly remarkable.

I really enjoyed this film; however, I will disclose I thought about 10 minutes could be shaved off as a whole. The documentary style feel to the film aided not only the intimacy of looking into the classroom, but also into the lives of the students and teachers. It was refreshing to see "the human" side of a teacher portrayed--one that is fallible, not always saying the right thing despite trying to do the right thing...which is often what all people struggle with. Also, I liked that the film focused primarily on the episodes within the school rather than drifting into a melodramatic cliché of teenage angst or stereotypical conflicts. The Class is a nice balance of glimpsing into the world of teachers and their students.