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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The DVD version gives you a chance to replay scenes that fly by quickly in the theater.., July 19, 2009
I knew absolutely nothing about this film - other than it was in French and won the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. I wanted to approach it with no pre-conceptions. After watching the 2 hour, 10-minute film on DVD I then read the background. I knew it was not a documentary but I wasn't aware that the teacher was the author of the original book upon which the film was based, and that he also wrote the screenplay. The students seemed to be too realistic to be professional actors. (And they aren't; they are actual students at the school.). I stuck with the film, waiting for a solution or happy ending (like Mr. Holland's Opus" or "Stand and Deliver") but it never came. At first I was disappointed , but then - after thinking about it - I realized that this is "real life" (it was based on an actual class) and it was just as much an experiment in filmmaking (using the teacher/author and the student/actors) as an entertainment film.
I won't go in to the details of the film - another reviewer, Chris Pandolfi, has done that already - but will comment on the DVD version, which I do recommend. First off, the subtitles are clear and probably the largest font I've seen in a while and are in the black bar below the screen (except, oddly at one point where a few sentences appear ABOVE the picture) , making them easy to read. The DVD also allows you to scan back to a section you may have missed. The bonus features include a 40-minute "making of" featurette and two brief scenes with commentary by the director and star/author. All of these are in French with subtitles. The "Making of" adds to appreciating the film even more, but watch it AFTER you have seen the film; not before.
If you are an educator, you will find this film food for thought. If you are a parent of high school aged students you will find this "real", even though it takes place in a multi-cultural school in France.
Steve Ramm
"Anything Phonographic"
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not quite a documentary, June 5, 2010
I'd heard great things about this film and was eager to see it. I attended school in France for a year and have a great interest in French culture. One of my very favorite films is The Chorus, about another teacher who faced a class of problem students in a French boarding school.
The film held my interest but I cannot say that I enjoyed it. I found it almost depressing and I didn't understand why until I watched the added features and learned that this was not a real documentary. The students were coached in improvisation and then the script was written from their sessions.
The writer/actor/teacher said, in an interview that he didn't include much positive material in which students gave correct answers or worked quietly at their desks. I can see that they wanted to avoid a repeat of "To Sir with Love" but I think they overdid it with the negativity. After watching these kids give the teacher a hard time for more than two hours, I found it hard to sustain any sympathy for them. We were supposed to feel empathy for the "problem" child who was eventually expelled, but, by that point, I was happy to see him leave. When the film was over there was no sense that anyone had learned much, if anything. The best thing that happened was the soccer game in the yard.
When I learned that this was not actually a documentary I was relieved of thinking that these kids were hopeless. I didn't watch all of the special features but I did see enough of the sessions of the students with the director and teacher/actor to see that they were a gorgeous bunch of lively, beautiful yountg people. I think that if the film had been made as an actual documentary, unrehearsed, that we would have seen the real natures of these kids and fallen in love with them. The way it was done, they were encouraged to act out their most disagreeable selves...and that didn't make for either a dramatically satisfying or a realistic film. In a way I feel cheated; those kids didn't necessarily always act the way that the film portrayed them.
You can see from the readers' comments that criticize the teacher for his bad performance, that the viewers believed that this was actually happening "in real life." A lot of conclusions were drawn that have no basis in reality.
I wish it had been a real documentary. I would have loved to see what those kids and that teacher were really like.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Teaching the class, August 16, 2009
"The Class" is about a dedicated teacher, Francois Marin (played by Francois Begaudeau), in an inner city Parisian middle school. Lead actor Begaudeau has an interesting background; he was in a punk rock band and was a writer before becoming a teacher. He turned his experiences teaching into a book, "Entre Les Murs" (Between these Walls), which was then loosely adapted into "The Class." In the film, we follow Francois as he teaches a class of 25 students during the school year. The movie made news when it became the first French film to win the coveted Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in over 20 years.
Francois' teaching style is unusual, at least for American audiences; he encourages his students to ask questions, even if it takes them off the main topic. So a lesson on subjugating French verbs can quickly lead to a discussion of slang and a variety of topics - some quite unexpected. Whether his style is effective is questionable. Plus, Francois is often just barely in control of his class, although he seems more in control than some of the other teachers. However, regardless of effectiveness, his style does make for a fascinating movie. Francois' strives to make his lessons applicable to the lives' of his students in his highly multi-cultural mostly lower income class. He struggles to understand his students and their diverse backgrounds as he attempts to teach them. How can he teach French to a bunch of students who openly say that they aren't French? That is part of Francois' dilemma.
The plot of "The Class" is nothing earth-shattering - just typical things one could observe in any classroom. What sells the movie is its tremendous realism. Begaudeau is extraordinary as the lead teacher; he's refreshingly human. He isn't portrayed as a hero who rescues his students and inspires them; this isn't "Lean on Me" or "Stand and Deliver." As good as Begaudeau is, the movie is stolen by the nonprofessional young actors. I liked that the teens had problems but weren't presented as thugs - this isn't "The Asphalt Jungle." These teens are more complicated than that. The young actors participated in months of workshops with Begaudeau and director Laurent Cantet, during which the specific situations that occur in the movie were improved. Thus, the actors themselves contributed to the script, which helps explain the degree of realism. The movie feels like a documentary, and we feel like voyeurs peeking into their space - between their walls. Whether you like the way that Francois teaches of not and whether you like these kids or not, "The Class" is an enlightening, entertaining film.
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