Sunday, October 18, 2009
The Class
Entre les murs (Between the Walls) aka The Class, is a 2008 film written and starring a real life Paris public school instructor, François Bégaudeau This film, directed by Laurent Cantet features real students and faculty. It has a documentary feel, but the scenes are well-prepared through months of improvisational workshops at the school before filmming began.
The Class is, I believe, one of the best movies ever made about education. For those of us who have taught at any audience level, it is a flood of truths and daily circumstances. Over half of the film shows the conversations and interchanges of Francois' classroom of culturally diverse middle-school aged students with both moments of adolsescent resistance and obstinance, of breakthroughs in learning and behavior. The Class shows a kind of internal, cellular world that never really gets outside of the school and classroom. There isn't a bunch of To Sir With Love, Blackboard Jungle drama and histrionic here. It is a film that feels true without the distraction of subplots in the private lives of teachers and students.
Although it is fictionalized in a reality setting, The Class probably comes closer to any other fictional film to demonstrate truths about learing and turning into adults that is the territory of Michael Apted's amazing time machine capusules of the 7 Up Series (49 Up came out in 2005) Earlier this year, Waltz with Bashir brought us deeper truths of war with animation.The Class reveals truths in education by creating a very real looking, well-prepared fictionalized presentation. Both are unique film experiences from a still vital international film community and brought to us by Sony Pictures Classics and are both very much worth checking out.
posted by well-executed buffet at 10:01 AM
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