Review of The Class (2007) by Andy S — 27 May 2009

The Class may, in fact, be the perfect movie to showcase my struggle with film as an art form. Is film meant primarily to reflect reality as it is or display reality as it could become? Does art show us ourselves or show us the best version of ourselves? I wonder if film, as a narrative art form, is meant to show us ourselves at the outset and throughout the course of its telling show us what we could become? Truthfully, I'm not sure there is any one thing cinema is supposed to be . . . except perhaps entertaining. And this brings us back to the film at hand.

The Class shows us the underbelly of a contemporary French classroom and, sadly, does very little else. The films characters don't really grow, life plods on as normal, and by the end one wonders what's the point. Of course, that may be the point . . . that school is cyclic, students don't really learn much, and teachers desperately need it to mean something, to someone (perhaps mostly themselves). As a film, The Class falls very neatly into art category #1 - reflecting reality as it is and providing few glimpses of what it could become. As a viewer, I have to accept that this is the type of narrative the film's creators have opted to tell. What I don't have to accept is that this particular narrative is entertaining. And guess what? It isn't. Not even close. The best The Class can offer is a lesson in futility and that's a lesson I'd gladly skip and recommend you do too.