Être et avoir

... 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

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!

Simply wonderfull is the only way for me to describe this film. No film is perfect, but this film comes awfully close! A beautifully shot film about school kids and their teacher in a French school in the Auvergne. I had the privilege to watch the film during the International Film Festival Rotterdam and hear the directors comments afterwards.

All children (appr. 20) ranging from age 4 to 12 (my guess) in one room with a teacher who really found his vocation in life. The school was chosen after visiting numerous schools in France. One of the main reasons, according to the director, for choosing this particular school was the fact that is had all children in 1 room and that room had ample space, which meant that no addional lighting was needed.

In the course of the film you get the feeling that the camera (and therefore us, the viewers) really gets invisible, allthough that was absolutely not the case. "The children behaved completely different when the camera was there". I didn't notice that. You really feel for them afterwards. This includes the teacher who is finishing his last year and will retire. One of the most touching moments for me was the last shot at the end of the school year when all the children leave for the last time and the teacher has a few emotional moments alone, realizing that this is the end, both for the children and himself. The moment is even more poignant when you realize that it is not acted, it is real...

Do not expect a high pace film with lots of drama and action. In the beginning I had a little difficulty with the pace of the film, which seems slow. Especially the "in-between shots" seem long, but after a while I got totally gripped in it and these shots really felt right. They got me down from my real-life fast pace (such as it is) and settled me down.

I could go on and on about what is so wonderfull about this film, but my advise: If you see one film this year, see this one !!

A stunning document on the nature of education as captured in beautiful, impressionistic pulses. The sights, the sounds; a construction of utmost simplicity whose structure, diaphanous and fluid, ignores commentary in favor of the subtleties of humanity, maturation and interaction that emerge from the froth of randomness that tethers each day to the next.

"Être et Avoir," the title, is presumably a reference to the two most important verbs used (and the earliest learned) in both French and English, "To be and To have," echoing the film's theme of capturing the struggle to acquire knowledge and, eventually, the struggle to impart it.

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.