Sin #26: Class Dismissed

I never had a great teacher. Some enjoyed their subjects and tried their hardest to pass on their knowledge but none ever made a connection; maybe the problem was with me, maybe I was too self-absorbed.

Even though I never got to really have a mentor, I have nothing but respect for teachers. God knows it’s a hard job spending endless hours inside a hot classroom with four dozen students who’d rather be doing something else; tired and underpaid, they keep on.

Movies about teachers always take the easy road. They portray lessons of idealism surrounding a teacher who’s virtually a saint and green students who, through the academic term, learn to grow both emotional and intellectually. The whole teacher-student dynamic has become nothing more than a cliché for cheap morality.

There is, however, a movie that captures the essence of what the school system represents and the true dynamic of a classroom. That movie is “Entre Les Murs” which was the Palm D’Or winner at the Cannes Film Festival a couple of years ago.

Taking its entire running time inside a school and focusing on a teacher and a difficult group of students from very different ethnic backgrounds, it achieves an almost documentary feel.

The film was written and directed by Laurent Cantet, who is in real life a school teacher and the cast also features real students. Watching it one almost forgets about acting since the screenplay doesn’t rely on artificial and plot driven dialogues; it’s almost as if we’re experimenting an improvisational workshop.

The other day I watched a Mexican production called “El Estudiante” that managed to cram every cliché one could imagine. It was about an aging man hoping to study literature in the university of Guanajuato (which is a lovely location, I have to admit) and how he changes the lives of the young students around him. There’s not a single sequence that doesn’t feel artificial and contrived. Movies like these were made for lazy audiences since there’s nothing that will challenge o surprise them; here’s a movie targeted at those looking for stories about cardboard characters and happy endings. Watching it, it helped me realize just how powerful “Entre Les Murs” is without even trying. We draw our own conclusions and are glad to experience a movie that doesn’t condescend to its audience.