the class

I'd been wanting to see this film for a while. It's about a teacher of French who works in a school in Paris. It's shot in an objective/documentary style with lots of quick editing suggesting multiple points of view and an emphasis on diegetic sound - scraping of chairs, kids yelling in the yard, tense exchanges between the teachers and their pupils. The characters are interesting - the main character, the teacher, particularly so. He seems to care about his pupils but can't seem to help making inflammatory comments; he doesn't always respect the students' honesty and doesn't really understand them culturally. (Somehow this doesn't make him any less likeable.) The school seems super-strict and the penalties for misbehaviour excessive. What it does well though is describe the problem most schools face of making and enforcing rules while ensuring individual fairness; this becomes the focus of the last half of the film where the teacher, Francois, acts against an African-born student who then faces the school disciplinary panel and, more dauntingly, the wrath of his parents. The ending's very effective; the narrative moves on from its main problem, and never returns, but leaves the viewer to ponder it all - which seemed a gesture towards the idea of individual regard/collective disregard. It wasn't as good as I'd hoped but not bad. It'd be a great resource for teachers of pedagogy.