Yes, Unpopular to Ask, But Did Anyone Not Like This Film?

i did not hate it but there was nothing special to it at all

average at best

Oddly enough, with all the terrorism stuff in the background and the questions about pedagogy, the actual political message of the movie seemed to be about whether teachers should be allowed to touch students or not. What's more it was complete BS.

The rule against touching is there for a very specific reason. What's more Mr. Lazhar makes it pretty clear that he doesn't know where the boundaries are. He hits a student in the back of the head (which would be enough to get him sacked) and later on (with the same student no less) he puts his arms around a student and runs his fingers through the student's hair, even when that student has just said that he does not like to be hugged. We also see the teacher hugging another student who he has seemed rather overly attached to for the whole film.

We see a teacher recounting an anecdote about their child's time at some kind of summer camp. They claim that the child was sunburnt because the teacher wasn't allowed to apply sunscreen. What are we forgetting though? There's nothing stopping them from getting another student to apply the sunscreen. And why would another student be less capable than the teacher? Utter nonsense!

Not sure why you thought the "woman-o-cracy" thing was affecting. Men less often want to go into primary teaching. There's nothing particularly sinister about that.

You are right that the premise seems fabricated. No school would ever let a teacher into the school without checking their background (and the fact that he was not even a teacher would be rather more shocking than the fact that he was an asylum seeker). At least they have the good sense to say that the headteacher would be losing her job too. It's ridiculous that a school would bring in a teacher without doing the required checks first.

I found the movie to be surprisingly slight. Abrupt ending.



Jack "Things could be worse"
Hurley "...HOW?!"

It's a constant, I think, that various people are moved by different things, and my response was quite different from yours; I'm not at all saying your response (or mine) is wrong or right, but am answering, since you asked (and asking further questions myself, out of interest). I did see mentioned somewhere that the premise of the play on which the movie is based came from some real events, but I didn't follow the link, so don't know if it's even true, or how close the events were to the play/movie, if it is. For me, this movie was quite different from DOUBT. What was affecting to you about the "womanocracy" scene (which actually takes place in the hallway, where the three men of the school are talking)? To me, that was a pretty light moment of male bonding, and the guys getting to know each other better.

Did the classroom scene where Alice confronts Simon, and he breaks down, crying really not move you? I found so many emotionally affecting moments, including when Bachir unwraps and looks at the photo of his wife and children, and we see immediately a series of close-ups of the faces of his students. Also, when a student asks Bachir about the meaning of "defenestration," and there's a flicker of emotion on his face, as he must be thinking of his daughter, who jumped from a window to her death, to escape the fire that killed the rest of his family. Then, after he's given the definition, there's a moment of empathy for Victor, who tells of his father (or grandfather?), who also jumped to his death from a window, to escape the torture he'd been enduring. There was even a very subtle passage, where Alice first tells Simon that she had also seen Martine hanging. He takes it in, looks up, and breathes in and sighs out, heavily. Immediately after that, we see Bachir exiting the school, after having applied for the job, and he also does the same breath in, and heavy sigh--a subtle, but effective echo.

It is true that there's a problem of credibility, with Bachir being hired with presumably falsified papers, and not enough background checking. But for me, the movie's strengths outweighed my concern about that.





Multiplex: 100+ shows a day, NONE worth watching. John Sayles' latest: NO distribution. SAD.