A Tinderbox: The Class

2008's Palme d'Or winner at Cannes, Entre Les Murs (literally translated as "Between the Walls", but for it's American release retitled "The Class") is probably the best film I've seen to somehow encapsulate the racial tinderbox that is Paris and its suburbs. The film follows the teacher of a French language and grammar class throughout the year as he challenges and is challenged by his unruly students. The screenplay itself is based on the writings of the sharp and talented François Bégaudeau, who also plays himself as the teacher, and directed skillfully by Laurent Cantet.


One of the things I found most brilliant about The Class was it's unwillingness to convolute its characters. The film is shot in an almost documentary-style with constant activity and reactions and provocations all around the classroom (it is shot in an Altmanesque fashion, where we get many subtle asides through, I imagine, carefully placed hidden microphones). The students are from a variety of racial, class and ethnic backgrounds. Unlike other films which have dealt with hard knocks kids from tough neighborhoods in public school programs, The Class doesn't ever try to narrow and moralize it's story. The teacher, François, doesn't make his students lives any better in the end, he doesn't save anyone. Instead he is caught up in a grim reality of having insulted his students while trying to challenge. Having lost his temper, they are provoked and he is provoked and the walls between him and his students are more apparent than ever. A student who we barely heard from during the entire film comes up near the end and tells him, "I learned nothing."

"The Class" dares to ask some tough questions--Is the French public school program inherently elitist? Does it impose a rubric of learning upon its students that is more imperialistic than considerate of their social and ethnic backgrounds? What is public education, anyway? There is a wonderful sequence where one of the students who was called "peitasse" ("skank") as François lost his temper later declares that what they read in class is stupid and that she learned nothing from school itself this year. She goes on to say, though, that she read "The Republic" by Plato. François, astonished, asks her what it was about. "Love, war, death, society..." She says. So many times in this film, as power shifts back and forth between teacher and students, we wonder who is teaching who. It would seem too easy to discredit the experiences and frustrations of the students. In fact, the brilliance of The Class lies in this clash of cultures, backgrounds and social affiliations. Instead of teaching French grammar, François has to face how they can all deal with each other.