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The Class (Laurent Cantet, 2008)
This French film won 2008's Cannes Palme d'Or Award and the Best Foreign Language Oscar. It's a solid film and one you might think that I would appreciate better than my rating. However, although the film seemed to fly by much quicker than the 129 minutes, it just didn't quite convince me that it told a complete story about an entire school year. The acting is really good though, and that may even be because most all the teachers and students were mostly playing somebody not all that far from themselves. The lead actor was a real teacher (François Bégaudeau) who wrote the novel the film is based on. Now, I'm not trying to dis the film at all. It's very realistic, at least to me. This school is supposed to be something similar to a junior high school in Paris, which seems to cover 7th-9th grades. My school covers basically 10th-12th grades, but many of these students are similar to ones I see on a daily basis, except for the fact that my students are much more troublesome. I mean, the students in Blackboard Jungle (1955) make these kids seem like angels, and for the most part, they are. Now, I don't really want to get into the problems you can have when you try to communicate with another generation and they think you mean something blatantly sexual when you mean something much more innocent. That part I can also relate to, but the film really glossed over that section. Overall, I think it's a good film which I recommend but it does seem to omit some crucial details about the reality of inner-city modern schools although it gets the gist of them quite well.
This French film won 2008's Cannes Palme d'Or Award and the Best Foreign Language Oscar. It's a solid film and one you might think that I would appreciate better than my rating. However, although the film seemed to fly by much quicker than the 129 minutes, it just didn't quite convince me that it told a complete story about an entire school year. The acting is really good though, and that may even be because most all the teachers and students were mostly playing somebody not all that far from themselves. The lead actor was a real teacher (François Bégaudeau) who wrote the novel the film is based on. Now, I'm not trying to dis the film at all. It's very realistic, at least to me. This school is supposed to be something similar to a junior high school in Paris, which seems to cover 7th-9th grades. My school covers basically 10th-12th grades, but many of these students are similar to ones I see on a daily basis, except for the fact that my students are much more troublesome. I mean, the students in Blackboard Jungle (1955) make these kids seem like angels, and for the most part, they are. Now, I don't really want to get into the problems you can have when you try to communicate with another generation and they think you mean something blatantly sexual when you mean something much more innocent. That part I can also relate to, but the film really glossed over that section. Overall, I think it's a good film which I recommend but it does seem to omit some crucial details about the reality of inner-city modern schools although it gets the gist of them quite well.