'The Class' Film Review

Holy cow. There is a lot going on in the 2008 French film The Class. I honestly do not know where to begin. Before watching this movie, I expected it to be similar to the previous movies we watched. That is, I pictured the movie to be centered around the teacher and how he helps his students in a heroic way. The Class was completely opposite. Instead of helping the students grow, the French teacher, Francois Marin (played by Francois Begaudeau), arguably did not even help his students and even potentially even hindered their growth. The Class is an interesting film that demands attention and represents the non-fairy tale movies about teaching.

 

The film begins with the teachers introducing themselves before the start of the school year. The teachers are fresh-faced and ready to take on challenges. Although, immediately the experienced teachers make sure the new teachers know which students are "nice" or "not nice." Soon after, the movie pans to Mr. Marin's class in which most of the movie takes place. Within the first day, it becomes clear he is going to have a difficult time with his students. They challenge him on nearly everything he says. For example, they challenge him for comparing a 55 min class to an hour, his word choices during exercises, and the usage of the imperfect verb tense. The students even question his sexuality at one point which not only was inappropriate but out of context. Either way, tensions steadily grew in the movie as the students continuously challenged Mr. Marin's authority. 

Mr. Marin has interesting encounters with multiple students. The movie is set in a Parisian inner-city high school therefore his class is extremely diverse as there are students from China and Mali. The main project that Mr. Marin had his students complete was a self-portrait. This project though, was initiated after they read The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. Mr. Marin asked one of his students, Knoumba (Rachel Requlier), to read a section of the autobiography out-loud but instead she refused simply because she didn't want to and believed he was picking on her. Mr. Marin was taken back by her reaction and calls her "insolent" after a heated argument. At the end of the class, he demanded an apology from her which ended up not being sincere. Mr. Marin then kicked his chair in frustration. From this encounter, Mr. Marin asks his class to write a self-portrait describing who they are but of course it was retracted from the class who claimed their lives were not exciting like Anne Frank's.

Continuously throughout the film, tensions grew as teachers cried out of frustration and meetings about punishment were highlighted. The climax of the movie began when the boys started an argument about soccer teams during Mr. Marin's class. Souleymane (Frank Keita) ended up flipping-off one of his classmates which led to a visit to the principal's office. The teachers then conducted a meeting questioning how to punish inappropriate behavior and if punishment is even a good tactic. The meeting includes two students who represent the student perspective but instead of being respectful they were giggling and interrupting the conversation. Despite this, the student representatives told their classmates that Mr. Marin thought lowly of them, particularly Souleymane. This consequently created drama in the class. Out of frustration, Mr. Marin claimed the student representatives were "skanks." In response, Souleymane did not agree with his accusation and one thing led to the next, there was physical fighting and even a bloody eyebrow. Consequently, Souleymane was expelled from the school. 

Like I mentioned before, The Class is a rich and provocative movie with a lot of controversial topics mentioned. Through Souleymane and Mr. Marin's interactions, the movie made me question teacher's authority. That is, the students have a very good point about how they don't have to do anything he has to say, not really. The movie also highlighted the concept of respect. Khoumba was a major proponent in expressing mutual respect between teacher and students after her stressful interaction with Mr. Marin. Throughout the movie, Mr. Marin was desperate for respect but so were his students. Unlike previous movies watched, the mutual respect was never accomplished. Instead, further turmoil. Another important questioned raised by The Class was what are the proper ways to punish bad-behaving students? Is punishment really the answer? During multiple teacher meetings, nearly all the teachers argued the ways in which they should address their disrespectful students but never settled on an answer. In the situations they were in, I would understand their frustrations and desire to punish their students but clearly that does not help any situation. In developmental psychology, it has come to be almost common knowledge that punishment and negative reinforcement does not help a child improve. Rather, positive reinforcement is the most influential technique towards teaching children to do good things. During some of the teacher meetings, positive reinforcement was mentioned but overlooked because other teachers didn't agree with it. The Class was consequently a different and provocative film. Despite this, I believe the problems Mr. Marin was facing are very relatable and realistic. If I had to rate this film out of five stars, I would give it four stars. I appreciated how it didn't tell a general heroic story and didn't have a sappy ending. The movie also was encouraged viewers to question authority while also asking what it means to be respectful. The only aspect of the movie which I would have liked more explanation about was the scene in which a student calls his classmates shameful. I was expecting there to be a greater upset amongst his piers but instead the movie focused on respect- which is also a great topic. Either way, I enjoyed this film and would recommend others to watch it.