The Will Leitch Experience

THE CLASS

1. You know what struck me first about The Class? How ugly these kids are. I mean that as a compliment, kinda: These are real kids, petty, mean, self-obsessed, insane monsters. They cause fights just because they can. They’re smarter than they realize but not mature enough to know what to do with those smarts. They create chaos because nothing means anything. They’re just awful little shits. (I say that with love. A tad.) Like everybody else at the age of 14. There’s nothing sentimental about these kids, and there’s never a moment when they’re self-consciously “cute” or anything resembling just about every movie kid I’ve ever seen. These don’t sound like fun children to watch. They’re not. But this movie is the furthest thing from “fun.” It’s as uncompromising and raw and scary and … well, every one of the students.

2. This is not to confuse with this with “Kids,” or some other paean to How The Kids Are Today, Can You HANDLE IT? Those movies cheat in a way that says more about the filmmaker than it does anything else. (Keep Gus Van Sant’s grubby mitts off the inevitable American remake.) The premise is so simple as to barely feel like a movie at all. Our “hero” teacher, in his fourth year teaching literature in inner-city Paris, attempts to make it through a semester. He recognizes – or at least tries to recognize – which kids are teachable and which kids are helpless. (There’s a cold-blooded scene at the beginning when colleagues compare notes on “bad kids” while flipping through a class roster.) He occasionally tries to inspire them, but mostly, he’s trudging through the lesson plan, making his own human judgments on his class, sometimes fairly, more often not. There’s no traditional plot here, but, as we move along, we notice certain kids stand out, their backstories peeking out from around the corner. This is never cheap; we just happen to notice them when our attention was otherwise diverted. Like a real teacher.

3. The film’s an adaptation of a novel by François Bégaudeau (who, strangely, is a film critic for the French version of Playboy) based off his experiences as a real-life teacher. He plays himself in the film, and though he’s apparently never acted before, he never takes a wrong step. He’s as natural as the kids (also apparently playing themselves), which is even more impressive because he’s constantly aware he’s in a movie. We don’t learn much about Francois’ life outside the school, which is as it should be: We see him just the way the students see him, as an authority figure to be challenged, battled and, every once in a rare while, respected. He cares about teaching the class, but probably not as much as he did when he started, and certainly not as much as he cares about getting through his workday in one piece. The movie turns on an extended battle toward the end in which Francois loses his cool and calls two students “skanks,” and it’s telling that Francois doesn’t consider this a mistake on his part, but more just another piece of annoying gristle the kids can use to make his life harder. This makes Francois sound cold … but you haven’t seen these kids.

4. During some of the rougher “battle” rapport sequences between Francois and the class, it began to strike me almost as a war film. Upon further reflection, though, that’s not quite right: It’s a prison film. The teachers here are guards, acutely aware that the notion of “rehabilitation” is for academics and theorists; they’re just trying to avoid a riot. Maybe you can catch a kid’s attention for a second, plant a seed, but mostly you just do your best to make it through and cross your fingers that something sticks. Parents and administrators – other than the school’s principal, who has the world weariness of a man who desperately would love to give up, but can’t, at considerable expense – are people who get in the way, like civil rights lawyers at a prison. Sure, everyone would like everyone to get along and turn into Mr. Holland and his opus. But these teachers, these prison guards, these ones out in the field, they’re too busy putting out fires. And their faces show it, and show how they once felt so differently, long ago.

5. I’ve probably made this sound like a cynical film, but it’s not: All the teachers, even Francois, want to help these kids. It’s just that they know better. And the worst part about it is that even when you’ve done your best, and maybe touched a couple of kids, there’s always one you’ve forgotten. In the film’s most heartbreaking scene, at the end of the semester, a student we haven’t seen before stays after to talk to Francois. She tells him, “I didn’t learn anything. I don’t want to go to vocational school. But I didn’t learn anything.” She does not say with this anger, or frustration, or even resignation. She says it with fear. His reaction is devastating: He tells her, no, that’s not certain yet, you can still learn, you can make a better life. But he doesn’t believe it, she doesn’t believe it, and, at the end of the school year, he doesn’t have the energy to convince either of them otherwise. The term is over. It has been hard on everyone. We close on her face, lost … doomed. You will be sporadically moved by The Class, and maybe even inspired. You will also feel overpowering despair. But mostly: You will want to hug anyone who has ever, ever been a schoolteacher.

GRADE: A