FeedEntre les Murs (The Class)
March 26 2009, 7:00pm
This is probably actually a 9, but I had to dock it a point for making me cringe for 2 solid hours. Every year or so I'll think "well, I could always teach . . ." and then I'll see something like this, and I remember that year that S.C. spent teaching middle school, which was (AFAIK) the worst year of her life, and just by virtue of living with her, also the worst year of my life.
As far as the movie goes, it's a remarkable document, in part because it's based on a memoir by an actual French teacher . . . who actually stars as himself in the movie. He's good, too. More to the point, though, it's a document of a society in upheaval. There has been plenty of coverage of the urban unrest in France, driven in part by friction between French society and wave after wave of immigrants from former French colonies. The classroom in this movie is a microcosm of that.
As far as the movie goes, it's a remarkable document, in part because it's based on a memoir by an actual French teacher . . . who actually stars as himself in the movie. He's good, too. More to the point, though, it's a document of a society in upheaval. There has been plenty of coverage of the urban unrest in France, driven in part by friction between French society and wave after wave of immigrants from former French colonies. The classroom in this movie is a microcosm of that.
