0
My favorite is a sweet little french comedy named Le Maître d'Ecole (Claude Berri, 1981), which is refreshingly not pompous and not epic at all. Just the story of a teacher with a good connection with little kids, who faces the stress of responsibilities when other teachers take a sick leave or go on strike. Difficulties with no bad guys, no tremendous message or revelations, no outlandish drama, simply kids being kids, people being people, and idealistic, candid attempts at doing the right thing in complicated situations. Also it's been based (loosely I assume) on an actual teacher's memoir, apparently.
Thinking of it, there's a bit of a Fred Rogers mindset to it. In the way it takes seriously and respectfully, as they come, the kids' questions.
Anyway, it's miles better than Dead Poets in my view. My problem with Dead Poets Society is not its message, which is more or less obvious to its target public (only set against a ridiculously coercive and dated schooling system), but its self-satisfied, self-flattering, overly dramatic way of making its point. The way it fishes for emotions and assent with cheap evidences treated as messianic revelations. It's like having today a white progressive film for white progressive people in which a 1950 apartheid society faces one white hero going "hey I think black people should not be treated like that" while the camera spirals around him in low-angle shot with a thundering orchestral music and the public swipes a tear at the corner in their eye going "so... so TRUE, i also do think that" and then go quoting him. You can't... really fault the message, but damn is it self-serving. Damn does the fruit hang lower than the camera makes it look. Anyway, that's the impression Dead Poets Society gave to me.
And in front of that, you have people who diss the film (yeaaah didn't like it at all either) for the message itself (wait what). Which makes me a bit uneasy, and makes me want to defend it. But beh. I prefer to sidestep and let the film's fans argue with those.
And to re-watch for the 748th time the light, fun and unassuming Le Maître d'Ecole.
__________________
Get working on your custom lists, people !