The Class

It is not often that you come across a movie that has as its lead actor, the very writer of the novel on which the film is based. Laurent Cantet's intriguing film "The Class" has in its lead role of the class teacher, the novelist and co-screenplay-writer Francois Begaudeau. That's only the first surprise the film pulls on the viewer.
If you went to into the film theater without knowing much about the film you are likely to think you are watching a documentary. That's the second surprise—it is not a documentary.
The film is apparently a semi-autobiographical story of the novelist and lead actor Begaudeau. Begaudeau himself was primarily a school teacher before he morphed his own life into a novelist, journalist, and an actor. But wait a moment. Even director Cantet's parents were teachers. Therefore, it is not surprising that the intimate knowledge of the teaching and the film-making processes get married seamlessly within the film and this contributed substantially to the film being honored as the first French film to win the Golden Palm at Cannes in 21 years!
Cantet allows the viewer to study the process of educating a fresh class of bubbly and street-smart adolescent kids in a Paris suburban school. Classroom education today in many parts of the world has evolved from the dictatorial British format where the learned teacher lectures and the student imbibes what he sees and hears. Today, teaching in progressive schools is more democratic, where the teacher allows student participation, where the student is encouraged to talk and become an integral part of the education process, contributing knowingly or unknowingly and "democratically" to the education of other students in the class just as much as the teacher. It is not without intent that one of the bright Internet-savvy kids in the film brings up the subject of Plato's "Republic" into discussion, but then the intelligent viewer is forced to recall that teaching for Aristotle's own students centuries ago was democratic and peripatetic. Begaudeau the teacher is flummoxed and that's precisely what Cantet the director of the film stresses to the viewer—the very quality and process of imparting knowledge today is dissected. Plato wanted a philosopher king to provide for the common good. He also believed democracy would just lead to mob rule, which is basically an oligarchy. Cantet appears to ask the viewer if the teacher is the Platonic philosopher king. Aristotle studied under Plato and disagreed with Plato on almost fundamentally everything. Cantet's film introduces parallels of bright adolescent kids being educated in the classroom as Aristotle would have been in Plato's class. Begaudeau teaches his students often like Plato would while adopting the peripatetic approach of Aristotle's own teaching style though confined within the four walls of the class.
The film is demanding of the viewer. The film is definitely not everyone's cup of tea.
To a casual film goer, the movie would resemble a live recording of a high-school class of boys and girls with a teacher probing the minds of his students, made up of different backgrounds, races, religions and representing various continents. There are tense moments, hilarious repartees, behind the scene meetings of teachers evaluating students, parent teacher meetings and even stocktaking of a "year gone by" in the school. The film's content can disappoint some viewers looking for conventional action, sex or heavy intrigue.
Cantet's approach to cinema is far removed from the typical Hollywood film. Yet Cantet and the screenplay writing team that included Begaudeau urge the viewer to zoom-out his/her mind from the microscopic events taking place within the confines of the four walls of class--the ethnic tensions, the psychological warfare and the social criticism--as they are equally likely to take place in the wider world outside the class, beyond the school, even beyond France. That is the beguiling aspect of Cantet's film.
The innovation apart, what is extraordinary in this film? One, the film clearly indicates the classroom has evolved from the classroom of "To Sir, with Love," or "Dead Poet's Society." Today, teaching adolescents is no longer a simple task. Students are well-aware of current social and political issues, thanks to the Internet and related technology. Teachers need to be aware of several bits of information and trivia to be on top of their class. Second, "The Class" progresses to reveal manipulative student behavior towards their teachers that British cinema revealed decades earlier to us. British films, such as "Absolution" (1978, with Richard Burton) and "Term of Trial" (1962, with Laurence Olivier) are vivid examples. Unlike the two entertaining British movies, all the action in Cantet's "The Class" is restricted to two school rooms—-the actual classroom and another room where teachers interact among themselves or with parents. Third, the film grapples with the question of the broader issues of equality within a classroom, a school and elsewhere in society. Fourth, the film is about current issues of integration of different cultures that perhaps confront Europe, Canada, and Australia more than it does in the USA. Africans and Asians are now citizens of France but do they get understood by the majority? A student Suleyman says in the film: "I have nothing to say about me because no one knows me but me."
How many teachers allow for two-way communication in a class? The film presents a growing challenge for educators of today. Can we go back to the days of Aristotle or do we prefer to learn under the teacher who "dictates"? Are we providing the turf for democracy or for dictatorships to emerge in society from the lowly classroom? This is a sensitive film meant for film-goers expecting more than frothy entertainment. The two final shots, somewhat similar, of the film graphically (and silently) capture the entire case of the film that preceded those shots. That was truly remarkable

The World is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner

As if to reaffirm the nascent uptrend in Eastern European cinema, Bulgarian director Stephan Komandarev’s 2009 Academy Award nominee The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner arrives on the heels of Ilmar Raag’s excellent feature Klass (2007) and Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007). Centered around the themes of immigration and associated cultural dislocation, the subject matter of Komandarev’s film is evidently less sexy than hot topics like high school violence or abortion, which explains the muted critical response and limited distribution that have plagued this title, unheard of among international audiences.
Yet, in terms of offering an accurate account of the post-Communist Eastern European experience, Komandarev hits the nail on the head with his portrayal of Sashko, a young German-Bulgarian man living a life rich in comfort and material possessions, yet strangely lacking in meaning. A tragic auto accident inadvertently leads to Sashko’s gradual rediscovery of his Bulgarian roots over the course of a road trip he takes with his grandfather Bai Dan, making the young man’s search for identity one of the film’s key motifs.
Based on Ilija Trojanov’s novel published in 1996, the picture offers a creative exploration of the last few decades of Bulgaria’s totalitarian history as told via the apolitical lens of the life of a family. While plot developments tend to be consistently predictable and Komandarev clearly do not shy away from moments of cliché, his work has an important message for its audience: as Bai Dan succinctly puts it, that “life is like the dice in our hands; fate is determined by the skill and luck of the player.”
Sashko and Bai Dan’s bicycle odyssey through central Europe and the Balkans is not only a physical but also a symbolic journey that takes the uprooted Sashko across a vast gulf of cultures from the present to the past, from modernity to tradition, from Germany to Bulgaria. The director’s choice to intersperse scenes from the present day road trip with flashbacks from the past appears to be an indirect way of reaffirming the possibility and importance of rediscovering one’s cultural heritage, however foreign or remote it may seem to be.
Beautifully filmed and edited on a shoestring budget, the work impresses on many levels with its purity, aesthetics and unbridled enthusiasm for life. There’s something inexplicably epic about this film, thanks in large part to Komanderev’s ability to paint an eloquent picture of the Bulgarian experience comparable to that crafted by Giuseppe Tornatore in Cinema Paradiso (1988) of its Italian counterpart.
The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner is a truly beautiful, mesmerizing film and no doubt one of the greatest ever made in Bulgaria. Together with Kamen Kalev’s more recent but equally outstanding production Eastern Plays (2009), Komandarev’s work puts the country on the cinematic roadmap of Europe, signaling the emergence of its film scene from post-Communist decline.
Easy to recommend to most audiences, this is one title you will want to go out of your way to see because, if nothing else, it will surely rekindle those old college dreams of backpacking across Europe.

In a Better World

Winner of this year's Golden Globes and the Oscars, the Danish film In a Better World, or Revenge in its native language, helmed by director Susanne Bier shows the powerful stuff that drama is made of, in crafting an engaging, sensitive and even dangerous tale that revolves around two families across two continents that deals with what I would deem as our threshold, tolerance and approach to the notion of being bullied and having the tables turned, to varying consequences.
There's Clause (Ulrich Thomsen) and his son Christian (William Jøhnk Nielsen) who just moved from London to a small Danish town, where the son blames the father for giving up the good fight against his mom's fight against cancer, and so forges an extremely testy relationship between the two since one fails to forgive the other, and the other trying too hard to seek it. In school, Christian meets Elias (Markus Rygaard), a boy constantly bullied by the older boys just because, whose doctor parents Anton (Mikael Persbrandt) and Marianne (Trine Dyrholm) are estranged because of the suggestion of the former's infidelity, and are on the brink of a divorce. The other major subplot and spatial treatment deals with Anton's time in an African village tending to the poor and the sick, which you'd know from volunteer groups out there who have doctors in their fold performing similar pro-bono services in under dangerous natural and man made circumstances.
As mentioned, the film focuses on something that rears its ugly head from time to time, with bullying happening not only within a school sandbox, but out there in society as well. And the ways we stand up to bullying got captured quite clearly here, as demonstrated by the different characters and their attitudes in handling such situations. For instance, Christian adopts the devil may care approach, for the young lad that he is, preferring to meet fire with fire, and dish out even worst than he received. Constantly scowling, William Nielsen does a good job portraying this angry boy whose daring gets more elaborate culminating in a tense moment which came quite expected in a way though saved by strong performances all round.
While his partner in crime and fellow peer Elias finds himself caught up in a dilemma and tussle whether to rat on his friend who had actually helped to keep the bullies at bay, perhaps it is how Ander Thomas Jensen's story that links Elias' father into the thick of things that made it richly layered. For all his compassion in helping to heal the poor in Africa, Anton follows a vastly different policy in the face of adversity. Perhaps you can point it to the Hippocratic Oath that all doctors have to adhere to, given his moral battle with his conscience when his skills are sought out by a vicious local warlord much to the worries and disbelief of the local population who has a growing respect for the good work performed for the community.
Anton is a fascinating character created, and Mikael Persbrandt shows his charisma in chewing up the scenes each time he appears, from the opening frame to the last. In a foreign land he's almost worshipped as a hero, but back home he's ridiculed and even abused by a stranger with whom he had no fight against, and his non-confrontational nature may seem unreal even, preferring never to stoop as low as his abuser, and hopefully imparting the correct values to his children. But as we see from the wrap up of the African subplot, Anton can in fact turn the tables if he chooses to, and I suppose it's really to pick one's fight, for those that truly matter (maybe even for the greater good, with intent a little bit suspect) rather than one for personal pride.
Director Susanne Bier (After The Wedding) just knows how to pace and package scenes that make you think, yet offering a lot of heart that they don't seem too overly engineered or manipulative. Through the tales of the different character arcs we see how true the avenues are in our very human response to those that give us flak for nothing or when we deem a certain injustice committed unto ourselves or others, either we talk our way out, fight back, or walk away with heads held high, the latter which is probably one of the hardest thing to do given bruised egos. It's also not too surprising that the perpetrators of this emotional downward spiral seem not to come from the women in the story like Anton's wife Marianne, who was almost like a flower vase if not for two superb scenes in the final act that lifted her role into one of necessity in contrast to how disappointed yet angry a mother can be, that Christian will never feel because of his own mother's absence.
A compelling dramatic piece with excellent characters and relationships, brought vividly to life by the cast of youth holding their own against the veterans, that makes this a must watch, and one of the best films of the year.

Head-On

Head On (Gegen die Wand), winner of the top prize "Golden Bear" at the 2004 Berlin Festival, is occasionally interrupted by a panoramic shot of a singer performing in front of a small Turkish orchestra on the banks of the Bosphorus across from Istanbul. It's a simple, at first incomprehensible, little device that provides punctuation and clarity amid the chaos and melodrama that otherwise dominate this story of a Turkish man in his forties and a twenty-year-old Turkish woman who meet in a psychiatric facility in Germany when both have attempted suicide -- he by crashing his car into a wall ("head on"), she by slitting her wrists. Cahit Tomruk (the sublimely attitudinizing Birol Ünel) is a purposeless rock 'n' roll loving boozer with a dead-end job collecting bottles at a club, and Sibel Güner (the wiry, intense Sibel Kikulli) is a young woman with conservative Turkish parents who wants to escape family pressures.
Both are total drama queens and both are German-born Turks. Cahit is more assimilated; his Turkish isn't even good. Sibel figures if he'll agree to marry her that'll get her away from her family. This is the irony of their situation: she must capitulate to the conventions of their culture in order to gain some freedom from it, and he must capitulate to society in order to get some sense of purpose. So they do get married -- he somehow passes muster with the stuffy family, baulking all the way -- and they eventually even fall in love. Her joie de vivre is exactly what he needs, and she's essentially just as wild in her way as he is in his -- but his nihilism and violence continue unabated and so does her promiscuity, and his brutal attack on one of her one night stands leads to jail and scandal, which in turn forces her to go to Istanbul. While he's incarcerated she writes him sustaining letters from Turkey -- their relationship, like the staid orchestra on the Bosphorus, is a stable element amid the surrounding chaos -- and after jail he goes to Turkey to find her.
To say this turbulent, brightly colored, lurid story is a "realistic picture of Turks in Germany" would be a total distortion of the truth. But somehow the situation of Cahit and Sibel reflects the unstable moods this half assimilated, half alien population experiences, and however melodramatic and unresolved the saga is, the two main characters are very well realized. The actors are strong, especially Birol Ünel, whose charismatic brooding and ravaged good looks make him irresistibly watchable. Both feel real to us -- he sardonic and gloomy, she dangerously spirited and full of life-- despite her dramatic suicide attempts, of which there's more than one. The story, as much as the images through which it's told, is both dark and vibrant.
We need the Brechtian, Greek-chorus device of those orchestral interludes on the Bosphorus, though: without an occasional break the drama and darkness would be too much. We also need to go with the flow of this movie, and not expect it to be more polished or more organized, or even better looking, than it is. It looks unlike most films we're seeing now, but that doesn't mean the cinematographer hasn't done the best possible job. What it has is life, tumultuous with incident, strong personalities, and a milieu we've not seen before. There's also a loud, authentic-feeling rock-pop soundtrack and a cunning contrast between Cahit's punk-rock sensibility and Sibel's love of good grooming and dance. Arguably the movie is too long, but that length gives it the feel of a saga, which it must have, because that's what it is, the confused, tawdry epic of a generation. Like all first films by a whole subculture, it has a lot to talk about. When Sibel and Cahit discover they still love each other, after everything, it's the Turkish Germans discovering that they have self-worth. The last scenes are open-ended: this generation's future is anybody's guess.

The Descendants

Alexander Payne has written and directed films (Sideways, About Schmidt) about men at unique crossroads in life and coming to grim, sobering realizations that cause a reevaluation of the past and an uncertain future. In The Descendents, he focuses on a man's family dealing with grief and the hidden truths that threaten to tear it apart. George Clooney is outstanding as a naïve husband and father who must confront life after a terrible series of events.
A water skiing accident in Hawaii has left a woman in a coma and her husband/lawyer, Matt (George Clooney), grief stricken and stunned by the news that she was having an affair with another man. It seems that everyone knew about the affair but Matt who was too busy with his work to even notice, and he must come to terms with it and rebuild his family. Matt's daughters are a troubled ten year old Scottie (Amara Miller) and his older teen, Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) who has a spacy boyfriend, Sid. As the family realizes that their mom may never recover, they must make some major decisions, and Matt must find the truth even if it means confronting the man who stole her heart. Meanwhile, Matt, as the primary trustee for the extended family, has an impending major land sale he must decide upon that could be a financial windfall for his relatives. Determined to meet his wife's lover, Matt does some detective work and, with some help from his daughters, finally arranges to meet the object of his obsession which causes him to reassess his own life and his relationship with his daughters.
This is Clooney's film all the way, and he gives a thoroughly convincing portrait of a man betrayed and oblivious to his wife and his family. He is not the handsome, dashing Clooney of Oceans 11 or Ides of March but rather an unglamorous fellow who is vulnerable. The pain and realization he emotes is heartfelt. Woodley lends excellent support as the knowing daughter who helps her father's quest.
Through much of the story you wonder if Matt will exact some kind of revenge on the creep or do something impulsive. That bit of tension only adds to an engaging plot. In the end, Matt does the right things and brings closure for his family. The final shot is great as Matt tries to become a dad again to his girls. A major subplot involving the land deal gets even more complicated as surprising information is revealed when Matt investigates his wife's lover. There are occasional moments of hilarity as when Matt is at the end of his rope and resorts to asking Sid for advice. It is a riot of a moment.
There are good details which add to our understanding of Matt's family including his cranky father-in-law (Robert Forster) and a mother-in-law who has Alzheimer's disease. What is special about a film like this is that each major character evolves through events and changed to a degree by the end (including spacy Sid). That marks good character development. These are not cardboard caricature but fully etched individuals with weaknesses like anyone, and our initial impressions about each are dispelled by film's end.
The Hawaiian scenery is gorgeous but never used as a travelogue. It merely sets the scene as did the wineries in Sideways and in some ways, the tropical paradise serves as counterpoint to the despair and angst that Matt must endure.
You could imagine a Broadway version of this story since it relies more on characters and situation. The film makes you care for and sustain interest in the main characters (brought to life by a strong cast) and what happens to them. In the end, there is sadness and regret but also hope, the kind of hope that strengthens and bonds a family.