Review of The Class (2008) by Sonny B — 07 Oct 2009

For those who have recently been high school students, Entre les Murs (The Class) is almost humurous in its familiarity. For those in education, it offers a complex picture of the problems that need to be overcome, without putting forward any simple solution. For all others, this is a rich classroom drama to remedy the simplicity of 'Dangerous Minds' and 'Freedom Writers.'.

It would be quite easy to mistake this film for a documentary. Its story of classroom challenges comes straight from a teacher who has experienced this all first-hand. The performances of teachers and students alike are pitch-perfect, genuine and rich, and the 'fly-on-the-wall' style of filmmaking is perfectly appropriate for capturing the tedium of modern teaching. Essentially, the film simply charts one teacher's futile attempts to reach a class of mixed-race 14-year-olds in inner city Paris.

Francois Begaudeau, the teacher who wrote the book on which this film is based, plays Mr. Marin. His sincere attempts to educate this class ( and to reach the smarter students amongst the group) are continuously thwarted, mainly by student insolence, and those many, mind-numbing, endlessly cyclical conversations that consume classroom time and teacher attention. For most part, the film is simply a document of these struggles, though it reaches a sort of climax after tempers flare in the classroom and one student's future education is put on the line.

At times, the film does drag a little, but this only contributes to its slowly-building impact. In the end the film's effect will take audience by suprise...