Review of The Class (2007) by Janz D — 11 Jun 2009

Laurent Cantet's account of the conscious mind's contradictions, stimulations, urbanities and cunning expression might have been set in any classroom in the Western world, and I trust most teachers would appreciate it. It is about the leadership contest between a teacher who wants to do good and students who clash about what "good" is. The film is so candid that neither side is seen as righteous, and both seem cornered by ineffectuality.

In a lower-income, melting-pot neighborhood in Paris, Francois, the teacher, begins a school year with a trusting preconception and an eagerness to be liked by his students. They are a multiethnic group of 15- and 16-year-olds, hardly any of them inclined by the educational system to be assuring possibilities for Francois' wishes. None of them necessarily strike one as being dumb, and actually perception may be one of their problems: They can see without any doubt that the meaning of the class is to make them exemplary members of the community in a society that has little use for them.

The movie is shivering with vitality, initiative, anxieties, grievances and the quick laughter of a classroom eager for relaxation. It doggedly deflects rigidly inflexible delineating, in a way like freeing itself from the very lockstep educational curriculum which makes the classroom too subjective to understand, and jumps into the middle of the scuffle, opening the objective doors for us to become accustomed to the students, evoking more than it tells, allowing us to relate to sundry perspectives. It is unusually persuasive.

Director Laurent Cantet starts with a best-selling autobiographical novel by a teacher, Francois Begaudeau. He cast Begaudeau as the teacher. He worked for a year with a group of students, extemporizing and shooting scenes. So persuasive is the film that it seems documentary, but all of the students, I learn, are playing roles and not themselves. There is a bitter Arab girl, who feels she is being underestimated by the teacher. A fiery African boy, very bright, but given to outrage. An Asian boy, also a sharp mind, who has learned from his family's culture, maybe to keep a low profile and not exhibit himself. Others who are allies, mates, accomplices.

Mounding vexation in the classroom has to do with the repetitive teaching of French. You learn a language by listening and speaking. You learn how to write by reading. It's not a state of being lost in thought. I don't imagine these kids think the people who first used the imperfect tense felt the compulsion to label it. The film stays for the most part within the classroom. A school year commences with the teacher as kingfish. Whether or not it concludes the same way is the trial and error of a good teacher. Do you remain on top through no-nonsense limitations? With humor? By becoming the students' friend? By study of the students' minds? Will they suspect your angle? What will they think of it? You're completely outnumbered.