This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, May 31, 2012 - I first saw “Monsieur Lazhar,” a very touching, thought-provoking movie set in a Montreal middle school, with an audience that included a number of schoolteachers. They loved it; and one middle-school veteran said, “That was the best movie I’ve ever seen about the educational experience.”
I’m partial to “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” myself. Or, on a more serious note, the searingly realistic 2009 French film “The Class,” set in a high school in a tough Paris neighborhood. But I’d have to agree that “Monsieur Lazhar” is a wonderful movie, one of the best I’ve seen about the relationship between teachers and students and the ways in which they learn from one another.
“Monsieur Lazhar” also makes some vivid points about the ways in which parents and bureaucrats intrude in the 21st century educational process, to the detriment of both teachers and students. I think that’s one reason the teachers in the audience liked it so much, but not the only one.
“Monsieur Lazhar,” adapted from a play and directed by Philippe Falardeau, begins with a tragic event – a popular teacher hangs herself in a classroom while the students are at recess. The body is discovered by one of the students; ironically, as his distraught classmates will remind him, the boy has reason to feel somewhat responsible for the teacher taking her life.
Bachir Lazhar, played superbly by the Algerian-French actor-director Mohamed Fellag, is a 55-year-old Algerian refugee in Montreal who reads about the suicide in the newspaper. He ran a restaurant in Algiers, but, desperate for a job, he appears at the school and manages to convince the harried principal that he is an experienced teacher and that he can handle the class for the rest of the year.
Monsieur Lazhar is warned against talking about the suicide, but he believes that the children must come to grips with the tragedy that took place in their school – indeed, in the very class where they continue to meet, although the walls have been repainted in a weak attempt to erase the past.
At the same time, Lazhar is unable to face or come to grips with a terrible tragedy in his own past -- what happened to his family after he slipped out of Algeria to avoid political assassination. Like the boy who discovers the teacher’s body, he feels tremendous guilt for something that he can’t really be blamed for.
In the classroom, Lazhar stumbles at first, but it soon becomes clear that, despite his lack of experience, he has the soul of a teacher. The dramatic center of the movie is in the classroom, where Lazhar, shrewd but humble, deeply empathetic, slowly brings the students out of the confusion and sadness they feel in the wake of the suicide.
He develops a particularly close relationship with Alice (Sophie Nelisse, who is irresistible), and it slowly becomes clear that she has become a substitute for the daughter he no longer has. He is warned by others at the school to avoid playing favorites, but, as he tells Alice’s mother, he cannot help being fond of the girl, and her mother compliments him on bringing Alice out of the dark moods she suffered after the suicide.
Despite being instructed to avoid talking about the suicide, Lazhar knows it has cast a pall over the class, and from time to time he will draw the students out on their feelings. At the same time, he opens up a bit about the loss of his family. Slowly, the wounds of the past are partially healed for both students and teacher, although much of the pain remains.
“Monsieur Lazhar” is an insightful, gently comic, bittersweet look at how human beings deal with a legacy of pain. The acting, particularly by the children, is superb. This fine French-Canadian film is highly recommended, and not just for teachers.
Opens Friday June 1