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Time
to learn? The Class. |
The
New Learning
By
Laura Leon
The
Class
Directed
by Laurent Cantet
The disarray that is the current educational system knows
no boundaries, as is aptly proven in the French movie The
Class. The students at Françoise Dolto Junior High could
very well be from Albany or the Bronx, so universal is the
sense of teenage angst; but more than that, there’s the shared
question of identity, especially for those from multiethnic
backgrounds, and how these students fit into a broader society.
It’s compelling and disturbing.
Teacher François Marin (Francois Bégaudeau, a real-life teacher
who wrote the book upon which The Class is based) has
to teach past imperfect tense to a roomful of kids who challenge
every example with questions like why he uses the name Bill,
instead of something like Assiata, as an example in a grammar
sentence; and who stare blankly when he uses a figure of speech
such as “when the other penny drops.” An early scene shows
us new teachers and veterans alike greeting one another in
anticipation of a new school year, and it’s already easy to
compare the stoic professionalism of the latter, say, with
the shining idealism of the former. When a newbie asks about
teaching Voltaire, Marin tactfully advises that this might
present too much of a challenge. As the movie progresses,
one realizes that what this generation might have thought
of as classics are no longer relevant, let alone understandable,
to a core contingent of the population.
As Marin traverses the school year, standard dilemmas crop
up. There is, though, the added gravitas of the almost Sisyphean
struggle endured by educators in this setting. A parent-teacher
conference really solidifies what we’ve already been sensing
about many of these students, but also offers some surprises.
The goth kid comes from an overachieving family. Sullen Souleymane’s
mother cannot even speak French, and requires another son
to translate between teacher and parent. Marin, indeed the
entire faculty, are forced to not merely teach, but to arbitrate
and to counsel, to determine how best to help when Wei, a
very bright Chinese student struggling with the language,
has to deal with his mother’s deportation. At a crucial moment
in the film, Marin must decide how best to deal with a student’s
insubordination, the outcome of such decision having enormous
consequences. That the so-called insubordination was in itself
a reaction to a series of events put into play by two mischievous
schoolgirls adds to the galling sense of impotency.
Throughout The Class, our assumptions about what education
is and should be are challenged. Almost without exception,
the students are glaringly annoying, demanding a place of
equality with their teachers and, at the same time, mistrusting
the classroom and its agents with the same caution with which
they view government. And yet, there are times when they surprise,
such as when the obnoxious Esméralda proves to be a highly
competent reader, or when she confesses her dream of becoming
a policewoman. Marin discovers one way to draw Souleymane
out of his shell, using photography, and the moments in which
the class expresses admiration for his photos are moving without
being precious. More than many of the other teachers, Marin
seems to accept the need for empathy, and nixes any absolute
adherence to disciplinary policies in favor of individual
interventions. Nevertheless, he often comes across as condescending,
something the kids accurately recognize and reciprocate. At
one point, having mistaken Chad’s defense of him against the
unruly Souleymane as something approaching solidarity, Marin
is stunned to find that, more than ever, Chad sides with the
students. That there is no one point of unity—even the children
cannot accept themselves as French—is one of the movie’s most
complex issues.
Ultimately, The Class offers a glimmer of hope, as
students and faculty play soccer together on the cement playground
at school’s end. This is high school, and these are adolescents,
one reasons. And yet, one leaves the theater with a very disheartening
sense that the classic education one might have thought the
ideal for all civilization is, if not nonexistent, a cripple
felled by universal and conflicting issues involving race,
history, culture and political correctness.
Who
Watches the Watchmen? Who Cares?
Watchmen
Directed
by Zack Snyder
I haven’t read the 1986 graphic novel, but after seeing Watchmen,
the movie, I have some understanding of why coauthor Alan
Moore did not allow his name in the credits. While director
Zack Snyder (300) has managed to bring Moore’s cult
(and critical) classic to the screen in a reasonably coherent
narrative, it doesn’t capture the author’s subversive visions.
For one thing, the material, at least as adapted by David
Hayter (X-Men) and Alex Tse, is bizarrely dated: This
alternate universe is governed by Richard Nixon (played by
a really bad imitator) in his fifth term, and the United States
and the Soviet Union are on the brink of nuclear war. The
Minutemen, a league of costumed crime fighters, have long
since been disbanded and discredited. They are depicted in
their former glory in a series of elaborately stylized montages
that have all the vitality of a wax museum display.
But that’s just background to the backstory, the foreshadowing,
and the flashbacks. The film starts out not with a bang, but
with an excruciating beating when the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean
Morgan) is pummeled to death by an intruder. Another of the
Minutemen, Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), suspects that the
Comedian’s murder is part of a conspiracy to do away with
all caped crusaders and masked avengers, except maybe “the
real superhero,” Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup). The doctor
is a physicist who accidentally had his molecules rearranged,
transforming him into a blue-skinned, godlike humanoid. This
startling, special-effects Titan is impressive, especially
as underplayed by Crudup, but as the film wears on (and wear
it does, at two hours and 40 minutes), the doctor’s conceptualized
engineering (he builds a spaceship by telekinesis) and emotionally
flattened philosophizing (for various and sundry reasons,
he loses interest in saving the world from nuclear destruction)
slows the plot’s momentum. Manhattan becomes so enervated
that he stops wearing his Speedo and walks around in full
frontal digital enhancement. Which is neither funny nor sexy;
it’s just something to look at, like the Zelig-style
glimpses of David Bowie, Pat Buchanan, and other notables
of the 1980s.
Deconstructing nostalgia and tapping into the collective pop
consciousness works better on the page—or in the hands of
filmmakers more imaginative than Snyder and Hayter. Though
he’s competent with wrangling the set design, costuming, CGI,
and every other artifice available to a budget of $120 million,
Snyder’s reliance on explicit violence for impact is numbing.
And the soundtrack of blaringly misplaced, iconic anthems
is laughably and distractingly atrocious.
Some of the set pieces have some menace, at least when Rorschach
is dominating the action. His pit-bull personality is well
defined, even behind his blobulating facemask, and his righteous
ferocity is actually scary (Haley is the most talented of
the cast). But mostly, the Watchmen are more like live-action
cartoons than characters from a novel.
—Ann
Morrow
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