The Class
Or thank God my school days are over
After a productive morning washing up and vacuuming, I took myself to the movies yesterday to see Palm d’Or winner The Class (or Entre les Murs). Since then the film has lodged in my mind and, like an annoying Robbie Williams song, I can’t seem to free myself of it.
The Class is a French film about well, a French class in a suburban Paris school and it stands out for a number of reasons:
- This mixed, multi-racial school of kids from poorer backgrounds is not what you usually see in French cinema. Apart from rare films like La Haine, you could be forgiven for thinking that the entire Parisian population spends all its time having steamy affairs and/or arguing about Deleuze at swanky dinner parties. There are no dinner parties in this film. Not one.
- Pretty much the entire film was shot in four locations: the classroom, the staffroom, the school playground and a school meeting room. Combined with long sequences of painfully realistic dialogue in class, this intense documentary-style focus on the school day serves to remind you just how claustrophobic and awful the place can be. School days are definitely not the best days of your life.
- And (I have to say it) are schools these days really like this? The kids were appallingly behaved in the classroom. With non-stop backchat, bickering, insolence and obfuscation, each lesson for them was a battle not to learn anything. My school certainly wasn’t like that and neither were my main sources of school-related information – Grange Hill, Degrassi High, Dead Poets Society and er, The Naughtiest Girl in the School.
- The 14-15 year old kids in the film may have made me grit my teeth and grimace at their behaviour, but this is because they were entirely believable. How often does that happen when you watch a film featuring so many young actors?
- The Class has the most subtle and nuanced plot and character development I have seen in quite some time. There are no cut-and-paste stereotypes – you really can’t hate the students, no matter how much you want to and you can’t entirely sympathise with the teacher either.
- If a bunch of native French speakers don’t understand the finer gramatical points of the subjonctive imparfait then what hope do I have?
Conclusions: It’s either a brilliantly humane look at adolescence and a tribute to the teaching profession, or a complete indictment of the school system today. Either way, The Class is fab – go see.
Tags: go see this, j'aime le cinema
April 15th, 2009 at 11:23 am
I think schools probably are like this. Waterloo Road is like Mallory Towers when you compare it to the real world.
Looking forward to seeing this film.
April 15th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
I haven’t seen the film but in most classes of teenage inner city children i’ve worked with there are some kids who do try to get on and do their work. It is sad that having worked woth primary and secondary you can expect more work out of primary kids than secondary (as in number of words written down!). One of the main problem is that 1 teacher 30 kids is victorian economic solution not educational ideal.
As to my school days a sort of benigh cross between Kes and gregory’s girl wiht hint of grange hill.
April 15th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
I don’t usually watch movies about schools. I think I try to forget enough about my school days that I don’t want to see what it’s like these days. lol This does sound interesting though.
April 15th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
I think you might well be right F-C. Mind you, don’t know how I would have coped with Mallory Towers either with alll those damn monitors, lacrosse matches and having to ‘buck up now, old chum ‘.
Are you a teacher BLTP?! If so, then I admire your patience. And more interestingly, did you own a kestral as a callow Yorkshire youth?!
Good point Keith – although my school days weren’t so bad. I am beginning to think that I was lucky now though! I hope your exclusion of school movies doesn’t include classics like The Breakfast Club – that’s a pretty good school movie now I come to think of it.
April 15th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
The breakfast club: not sure about illinoise’s schools but I an definite that the hardest kid in our school wouldn’t have last long with a name like “john bender”! good flm though I’m not a proper teacjer but have worked with kids a fair bit.
April 15th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
Yeah I saw this a couple of weeks ago. I agree it’s definitely worth seeing. I don’t think I’d get too downbeat about the constant backchat from the kids. The film only concentrates on a few of them and they’re the ones who make the most noise of course. There must be some off camera (well maybe we could hope for two or three?) who just get on with their work without mouthing off the whole time? There was the Chinese boy who pretty much toed the line, wasn’t there?
I must say I found the ending (spoiler alert!) quite sad and I did feel pretty sorry for the teacher in fact, who seemed to remain relentlessly upbeat to the end despite the class having pretty much turned against him…
Enjoyed it though…
April 15th, 2009 at 11:13 pm
hahaha, BLTP, forgot about that. John Bender, yes! ‘Election’ is a good school movie too actually… and ‘Ferris Bueller’…But anyway, you didn’t have a kestral then?
I admire your positivity Hoops – there must have been hardworking kids off camera!! But yes, I suppose the Chinese boy did seem relatively well-haved. There might well have been others. Although none of them did their homework (reading Anne Frank) I note!
I just realised today that the guy who plays the teacher in the film wrote the actual book that it’s based on. He wasn’t ‘acting’ (although in a sense all teaching is acting I suppose). No wonder he’s no longer teaching. The ending was dispiriting wasn’t it? Although I would question insulting your students and taking it up with them in the playground…
April 16th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
will tha stop going on abart me kestrel , I did have one she w’luvley but of course m’ bloody b*stard ova brother killed it when I was on’t m’paper rand……
April 16th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Don’t take this the wrong way, BLTP, but that might the most well-typed comment you’ve ever made round here. Is there something in that?!
April 16th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
I dun’t kno’ what tha meanz….
April 17th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
I’m keen to see this one. Though I can imagine that I might need to line up a viewing of ‘Etre et Avoir’ immediately after, just to stop me wringing my hands in despair.
I’ve got friends who are teachers and though they do have an awful culture of moaning (and I’ve said this to their faces), I couldn’t do their job. A while back one of them (male) was trying to confiscate a mobile phone from a young lady, who stuck it between her legs and said ‘you gonna take it from me now, are you sir?’
I was horrid as a teenager, but I’d have been crucified naked on the quad for ‘backchat’ like that.
April 17th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
What a lovely young woman! That is one of the most interesting things about the film actually – how students apply their intelligence, not to learning, but to winding up and attempting to destroy the sanity and reputation of their teacher.
Definitely wasn’t like that when I was young. God, I feel like I’m turning 70. Must get round to watching ‘Etre and Avoir’ – I think my inner Daily Mail reading pensioner would like it.