Truly Dreadful Film

just watch it!

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

This film tells of a difficult class with very inappropriate behaviors and learning difficulties. The end was opened, which I honestly did not appreciate because I like to know the whole story and not have to speculate about its mismatch. At times the students' attitudes irritated me deeply, which led me to conclude that in the end teachers do not have so much to complain about, for they could have been worse. The story also recounts current situations as the illegal immigrants in France as well as the "tin neighborhoods" in which these people are subject to live.

THE CLASS (aka ENTRE LES MURS) is a film that is certain to be divisive in some way, whether it be with the borderline slavish devotion to realism or the teacher at the center of the story. While I wouldn't say that I loved it, it was very good on multiple levels. The film follows a teacher (Francois Begaudeau) in a Parisian high school and the class he teaches over the course of a year. Pretty early on, it becomes clear that he has a different approach to teaching than a lot of the other teachers he works with, building a rapport with his students by getting to know them on a personal level. Still, this bunch of inner-city kids aren't the easiest to work with, and have a lot of ups and downs with their teacher. Earlier when I used the word "slavish," I didn't completely mean it in a negative sense. What I really mean is that the film goes to great lengths to accurately portray its subject, the Parisian educational system. I remember bits and pieces from when I was in high school French class, but its an entirely different experience watching what it's probably like on screen. One way in which this film takes a realistic approach is by using (apparently) non-actors/students to portray the class of students. The end credits also indicate that a lot of the teachers used their real first names, probably because they were also teachers in real life. Most importantly, this film is based on the life experiences of the actor portraying the main teacher, M. Marin, who also used to be a teacher himself. Completing this realist approach is the exclusive use of hand-held camera-work and the lack of a score. All of these aspects combine to create the feeling of watching a documentary. Even the dialogue doesn't really feel like dialogue, instead hewing pretty close to how French students probably talk. This cinema verite approach might not work with a lot of people, who might find it boring, but I thought it was compelling enough. The only major issue I have, and this could just be me imposing my cultural experiences onto another, is an event which takes place late into the film. Given that the students in this film are fairly rowdy and occasionally disrespectful, it would make sense that there be some disciplinary action taken. And by and large, the teacher deals with his students in a very progressive way. However, I felt like he crossed the line in one scene where he lets his own students get the better of his emotions, and there isn't any repercussions. For me, this was a large setback to the likability he had established up to that point, and yet after the event boils over it was like nothing had happened at all. Again, it's probably because things work a little differently in France, but it probably wouldn't fly here in the US, especially in the current academic climate. Overall, THE CLASS is still a very valuable and interesting film for the insight it provides into the inner workings of the Parisian school system and the relationship of a teacher with his students. Highly recommended.

Laurent Cantet's absorbing film, 'The Class', tells an apparently true tale of the life in the year of a French schoolteacher. It's a portrait of an incredibly dedicated and imaginative man, working to engage with a mostly first or second generation immigrant class whose members are not bad children but who fundamentally have, in many cases, little idea of why they are in school in the first place. Teacher and script-writer François Bégaudeau plays the lead role; the self-portrait is flattering, but not overly so, the story of his efforts to cross the cultural chasm are fascinating and convincing, and the fruits of his labours real yet frustratingly small. One to watch if you've ever been tempted to utter the old cliché that "those who can't, teach".

From my own experience with entry level college students and eighth graders in New Jersey, students in this film are just like American kids in the classroom. The film is about a teacher of French in an urban Paris school with an overcrowded classroom and several different personalities in the classroom. When the teacher gets a student, Souleymane, a young man from Mali in the classroom, he soon has trouble but it's not that easy to explain. Like life in the school system, everything is complicated and there are multiple sides to each story. This film does a remarkable job in replaying life in the classroom to life on screen. The students are real as is the other teachers. I don't think there is anybody recognizable but the teacher in the same role. For most of the student actors and actresses, I believe they are acting for the first time on screen. It's very realistic point of view of what goes on in the classroom and how the teacher and students interact with one another.