IN THE CLASSROOM

Classroom dramas usually have two key ingredients—an inspiring teacher and underperforming students. People are creatures of habit, and filmmakers are no different. From Stand and Deliver to Freedom Writers, the genre includes some good films and plenty of mediocre ones, but most have suffered from a ready-made feel-good message. Laurent Cantet’s The Class is nothing like the above formula. The film chronicles French teacher Francois Marin’s year-long journey with his class of junior high students in Paris’ 20th arrondissement, a ethnically diverse working-class neighborhood. Filmed in the course of a school year with real-life teachers and students, the film faithfully reveals the happenings in the classroom.

Having real students playing students in a film is convenient, but having a teacher playing himself is simple yet ingenious. François Bégaudeau, who plays Mr. Marin, also wrote the book Entre les murs (Between the Walls), in which the film is based on. Bégaudeau has been a teacher for more than ten years and an occasional film critic for several French publications. His book, like the film, describes his daily experience with his students during the school year. Director Laurent Cantet and his crew held weekly improvisation workshops in the school, and the students who ended up in the film are the ones who stayed in the course throughout the year. During the workshop, the filmmakers had the teenagers improvise different situations and the teenagers developed their own lines, which set the film’s naturalistic tone. Hence, the film’s situations are predetermined but each scene’s development is guided by the cast’s rehearsed improvisation. Shot with a documentary-like style, The Class is as realistic as any fictional film can be.

Shooting a film like a documentary can make it look real, but for the viewers to feel that it is a work of authenticity, the filmmaker has to operate with the understanding of the dynamics in the real world. Most classroom dramas fail because they are based on the false premise that one teacher’s unflinching ideals will change the lives of students who are seemingly waiting to be rescued. While such romantic legend is faintly possible, it is fair to say that is not the case in the real world 99.99% of the time. Laurent Cantet’s film focuses on the students as much as it does on the teacher, showing that a teacher’s work is simply one of many factors contributing to a student’s success or failure. Mr. Marin tries to open dialogue with his students, but they test his patience from time to time. The film captures some very heated exchanges between him and his class. Sometimes, Mr. Marin handles it smoothly. Other times, the students frustrate him and he gets sarcastic with his class. And there are also times that he cracks under pressure and reacts unprofessionally. Is he a good or bad teacher? The film defers the judgment to the viewers.

France is an increasingly heterogeneous society with most immigrants coming from its former colonies. Race and class issues are unavoidable in a film about the youth of this multicultural nation. In The Class, the young people’s attitude towards cultural and national identity is explored in their conversations with Mr. Marin and between each other. The students express their disinterest in Mr. Marin’s lesson on formal grammar, which they find outdated and irrelevant to their lives. The boys’ discussion about the African Cup of Nations seems rather innocent, but their viewpoints not only reflect their attitudes concerning the soccer tournament, but also their feelings toward assimilation and the importance of their cultural roots.

As its original French title implies, everything in the film happens between the classroom walls. The Class offers no subplots on the private lives of the teacher and students, leaving viewers to wonder how the characters’ personal experiences affect their choices and behaviors in the classroom. It is apparent that Cantet wants his film to avoid as much personal judgment as possible and strictly focus on the classroom dynamics, which does little to satisfy the voyeuristic desire of a cinema audience. At the end of the school year, when a student disquietingly tells Mr. Marin that she has not learned a single thing, the two of them are confronted with the very same fear and uncertainty. Mr. Marin steadfastly attempts to instill hope in his students, but he too understands that the obstacles in front of them are enormous.

The Class opens at Landmark River Oaks Theatre on February 20.