The class
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The class |
| Original title | Entre les murs |
| Country of production | France |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | 2008 |
| Age rating | FSK 0 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Laurent Cantet |
| script | Laurent Cantet, François Bégaudeau , Robin Campillo |
| production |
Carole Scotta , Caroline Benjo , Barbara Letellier , Simon Arnal |
| camera |
Pierre Milon , Catherine Pujol , Georgi Lazarevski |
| cut | Robin Campillo, Stephanie Leger |
| occupation | |
| |
The class (original title: Entre les murs , Eng. "Between the Walls") is a French film by Laurent Cantet , which is based on the autobiographical novel of the same name by François Bégaudeau .
The film is essentially based on François Bégaudeau's experience as a literature and French teacher in a Paris suburb. Bégaudeau described this experience in a novel which was published in 2006 and which is the basis of the award-winning film. François Bégaudeau has also written parts of the script for the film of the same name and plays the leading role, the teacher François.
action
François Marin has been teaching French for four years at a Paris school in the 20th arrondissement with a high proportion of migrants. He is a loner who only communicates with his colleagues on factual issues. In contrast to these, Marin does not try to expel troublemakers from class and prefers to deal with the conflicts publicly in the classroom. He even answers questions about his own sexuality from the students who mockingly call him “Mammsel Marin” . His tolerance can also be seen in the cell phone ban, which his students are allowed to oppose during class.
At the beginning of the new school year in September, Marin will be the teacher of class 4.3. One of his 25 students is the cheeky Esmeralda, who dreams of becoming a police officer or a rapper. The Chinese immigrant Wei is willing to learn and disciplined, but has an insufficient command of the French language. The Koran believing Souleymane from Mali rejects French nationality totally dependent, truant often or always appears unprepared to class. Carl, who comes from the Antilles , joins the class during the school year. His older brother is in jail, but he identifies with France and tries to adapt after being expelled from school.
Even the first few hours after the holidays are not free from conflicts. In Marin's opinion, 14- to 15-year-old students waste too much time starting class, are rebellious and refuse to put up name tags. When reading and understanding texts, there are large knowledge gaps and differences in performance - the students have problems with words ranging from condescension and Argentine to language images such as winking with the fence post . Even with the conjugation of simple verbs, the pupils soon reach their limits and publicly suspect their teacher of letting the class “come up” .
When Marin discovers one day that his students have not read Anne Frank's diary as instructed , he loses patience. He forces the student Khoumba to read the text. But this refuses. By demanding a sincere apology after class, he turns the student against him, who then decides to stop working and to ignore Marin completely. On the other hand, Marin's suggestion to take self-portraits was a success with the students. Souleymane also takes part with pictures from his everyday life that he took with his cell phone. His mother does not speak French, as Marin found out at a parents' evening, while other parents criticize his teaching as too lax or reject the French school system entirely.
Performing the self-portraits leads to arguments among the students. After a conflict with his classmate Carl about football, Souleymane Marin goes on duet and ends up with the director. At class conferences, the teachers discuss the fact that sanctions no longer apply to students and unsuccessfully suggest new sanction systems. At the final grade conference, Marin defends Souleymane in front of his colleagues, but admits that the boy may be “limited” in his ability to perform. The teacher feels personally attacked by the indiscipline of the student representatives Esmeralda and Louise, who giggle incessantly during the conference. The behavior of the two will be ignored by the teaching staff during the conference.
The next day the situation escalated in class: Marin criticized the lack of seriousness of his two students in front of the entire class. He expresses himself to the two girls in the form that only "sluts" would behave like this. Both had previously forbidden to inform students in the class, including Souleymane, about the events at the conference and their grades. Souleymane then accuses the entire teaching staff of revenge on him. In the heated discussion that followed, the boy illegally used Marin again, freaked out, wanted to leave the classroom, was held by a classmate and tore himself away from his comrades. Eventually, he accidentally injures Khoumba with his school bag and leaves class without permission.
Souleymane's behavior has consequences. He is banned from class for two days. At the same time, Marin refuses to take responsibility for his own derailment. He hides the insult to his two students in the official report, which does not go unnoticed. To Marin's amazement, the class is still behind Souleymane, who is threatened with deportation to Mali if he is expelled from school. Marin begins to question the system. In spite of his mother's advocacy, the disciplinary committee goes to the disadvantage of the student, as in all other 12 cases in the last school year.
In the last French lesson before the holidays, Marin asks his students what they have learned. Carl was enthusiastic about chemical experiments, Khoumba about music and Spanish. Esmeralda states that she has not learned anything and criticizes the teacher's choice of literature. When asked, she amazes Monsieur Marin with the fact that she privately reads Plato 's The State - “Not a book for sluts” , as Esmeralda proudly states. After class, the teacher from the confession of hidden Henriette is surprised that claims to have learned nothing in all subjects, although their services for a transfer sufficient. She also confides in Marin her fear of the upcoming vocational school. The school year ends in June with a soccer game in the schoolyard between teachers and students.
production
In the novel Entre les murs , Cantet found the material and documentary support for his idea of making a film about everyday school life. The personality of François Bégaudeau and his relationship with the students was a further source of inspiration. The freedom to improvise was still important to the director: "We didn't want a narrative thread straight away, but rather that the characters develop successively without foreseeing this development could."
Most of the actors in real life are also students or teachers at the school in northeastern Paris. However, the students do not play themselves, but rather personalities developed together with the director in improvisation workshops. In addition to the use of amateur actors, the realism is largely created by three permanently installed cameras that capture all movements of the class. Two cameras were fixed on the students and the teacher. Another flexible camera was used for unpredictable scenes.
reception
The film premiered on May 24, 2008 at the 61st Cannes Film Festival , where The Class was shown as one of the last entries in the competition for the Palme d' Or. According to Thomas Sotinel ( Le Monde ), the film exposes the very large gap between a teacher and his students in two hours. The director and lead actor let the contradictions of the French school system work for themselves: “The effort not to exclude anyone and the will to maintain discipline; recognizing diversity and teaching a unique culture ... ” said Sotinel. As a counterpoint to Nicolas Philibert's documentary Being and Having , Gérard Lefort ( Liberation ) understood the film, which, in contrast to its original title, tore down the partitions and “open the windows” . Marie-Françoise Nonnon, geography teacher at a problem school in the canton of Grande-Synthe , who awarded the Prix de l'Education nationale to Sergei Dworzewois Tulpan in Cannes, also attested to the authenticity of the film : “His (Cantets) film is a shock, a kind of mirror , not always easy to accept, about the daily life of many teachers ... the film shows the difficult training of young teachers, often without a permanent position. It is a film that shows a place where it is difficult to impart knowledge and traditional teaching no longer takes place, ” says Nonnon.
The film was also received extremely positively by the German-speaking specialist press. According to the critic Susan Vahabzadeh ( Süddeutsche Zeitung ), the class balances “artfully on the edge of the documentary film” . “Cantet tells it impartially and without prejudice, and without any possible solution” , that makes the film “so disturbing that it doesn't simplify anything and doesn't satisfy the longing for blame.” Christoph Egger ( Neue Zürcher Zeitung ) drew comparisons to directors like Frederick Wiseman or Mike Leigh . “A cinema of immediacy that not even the Dardenne brothers managed to achieve this time,” says Egger. For Rüdiger Suchsland ( film-dienst ), the subject matter was “in the film, the backdrop and material for the everyday cultural struggles; the classroom becomes a microcosm of society. ” Although the film is “ a good, artistically interesting and courageous film ” , Suchsland counted it among the less interesting works in Cantet's filmography.
Awards
- The film received the Palme d'Or on May 25, 2008 at the 61st Cannes Film Festival .
- Months later, Die Klasse was nominated as an official French entry at the 2009 Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Language Film category.
- Nor could the class win in 2009 the award for Best Foreign Film at the Independent Spirit Awards.
- There were nominations in the categories of film and directing at the 2008 European Film Awards .
Individual evidence
- ^ François Bégaudeau: The class. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2008. ISBN 978-3-518-46031-3
- ^ François Bégaudeau: Entre les murs. Gallimard, Paris 2007. ISBN 978-2-07-034290-7
- ↑ moviepilot.de: How it all began with Laurent Cantet: The class
- ↑ Federal Agency for Civic Education: Die Klasse - Filmheft (PDF; 1021 kB)
- ↑ cf. Sotinel, Thomas: "Entre les murs" d'une salle de classe . In: Le Monde, May 25, 2008, p. 19
- ↑ cf. Leforet, Gérard: Cantet, la classe! . In: Liberation, May 24, 2008, p. 25
- ↑ cf. Quinio, Paul: "Il ne faut pas prendre le film comme un modèle" . In: Liberation, May 27, 2008, p. 4
- ↑ cf. Vahabzadeh, Susan: Das Kino auf Schattenfang ( Memento of the original from January 26th, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at sueddeutsche.de, May 25, 2008 (accessed on August 18, 2009)
- ↑ cf. Egger Christoph: The purity and manipulability of the images . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, May 26, 2008, No. 120, p. 21
Web links
- The class in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- dctp interview (video) Alexander Kluge in conversation with Laurent Cantet
- Film of the month January 2009 - discussion and teaching materials at kinofenster.de, ed. from the Federal Agency for Civic Education and Vision Cinema .