Sometimes simple is the best way to go in order to create a great film; that is if you have the writing talent to cobble together a script with dialogue this great and then bring in just the right actors to make it all work. Starring François Bégaudeau and directed by Laurent Cantet, The Class manages to take seemingly mundane every day occurrences at a Paris middle school from the first day to the last and turn it into a perfect storm of human interest.
Bégaudeau plays François Marin, a teacher in a relatively middle class school in Paris teaching French to a diverse group of 13-15-year-olds. Marin rarely objects to free speech in his classroom and as a result often has to deal with bouts of insolence and disrespect. Occasionally he confronts it head on, other times he ignores it. No matter what he does he never seems to hold a grudge. However, that isn’t to say it doesn’t affect him. Perhaps the most intriguing thing about The Class is its ability to create so much tension using so many minor incidents involving Marin, his students, the other teachers and the students’ parents. These incidents range from personal growth to personal destruction on the part of all involved. It’s an all-encompassing effort and it is impossible to turn away from. It begins as a story with no real direction, but it seemingly evolves on its own as the daily life in The Class feels no more scripted than were it a hidden camera documentary.
While Marin guides the story in terms of getting from “here” to “there” the main character is his classroom and the kids that show up each day. The French title for the film is Entre les murs or Between the Walls and that is exactly where it all happens. Depending on how your classrooms behaved when you grew up this one may take a little bit of getting used to. The kids in Marin’s class are particularly unruly, much more so than when I went to school. However, the authenticity of the piece remains intact and feels wildly more believable than the awful MTV-reality documentary American Teen, which earned a minor blip of attention earlier this year. The Class not only manages to make a conversation between Marin and his students about the imperfect subjunctive authentic, it manages to entertain the audience while doing so. It’s the interaction between the characters in each and every instance that influences what will happen next and you never know which word will trigger a reaction.
The film’s biggest triumph may also be considered by most to be its major flaw. While I have already said Marin is teaching a class of unruly and occasionally insolent and disrespectful students, Marin himself is also far from perfect and at times unprofessional to the point he should be fired. I say this is the film’s biggest triumph because it shows how the line between teacher and student can sometimes be blurred, but I think some may lose enough respect for Marin that they ultimately find no sympathy for either him or the students, which would in turn leave them cold to the entire film itself. While I expect that to be far from how the majority will react, I do expect some to pick up on Marin’s mild bit of arrogance and his occasionally flawed reasoning when considering his audience is no older than 15-years-old.
Using Marin as the standard, The Class sets up the ideal that mistakes will happen – forgive, forget and we all move on. If, like me, you are able to grasp onto this concept and apply it to the film and its characters you should find yourself running through a world of emotions as you watch. Otherwise you may find yourself in judgmental mode, which I believe may also serve beneficial if watched in a group.
How this film will play to the majority of audiences depends on your tolerance of dialogue and your patience in letting a story establish itself. Personally I am a dialogue freak and if a director can manage to show people in an interesting and engaging conversation I am likely to stick with your film for the duration. The Class assumes you are willing to get to know Marin and his class before making any initial judgments on the film, a bold expectation considering the attention span of most moviegoers these days, but then again this is not a film that will be seen by the masses as much as it will become an art house favorite just as it has become a favorite of mine.
