There are broken rules, misbehaving students, fights, cussing and one very tired teacher who truly tries his best to teach his kids, but stumbles more than a few times. This is the story of The Class.
The French film was originally released in 2008 in France under the title Entre les Murs (literally, Between the Walls). Director Laurent Cantet casts Fran??ois Bégaudeau as the troubled, herky-jerky schoolteacher who struggles to balance his own ego and methods with his "let's-all-drop-our-pencils-at-9:53" mannered French middle school class. Bégaudeau, who plays the teacher Fran??ois Marin, was himself a teacher, and is the author of the book on which the film is based, adding a unique element that gives his character a more layered complexion that shows on screen.
Bégaudeau is brilliant in playing Marin, the typical teacher whom students know has intelligence but has none of the backbone and inherent strength that can garner the respect necessary to prevent being eaten alive. Marin wishes to command and teach his class of roughed-up, outer Parisian kids, but he already knows that he will probably fail.
The kids themselves are no princes and angels; they often make Marin's life a red-hot hell. This leaves the strapped-for-help teacher very few options. He stands his ground when his students question him and the French language, but often without steady footing. Marin is often very quick, coming up with cutting retorts to his students' complaints and attacks, but this often incites them further. He wants respect, but he does not really receive it.
In one scene, one of his students refuses to read a chapter from The Diary of Anne Frank. The student, an girl of African origin named Khoumba, was one of Marin's stars from the year before. Marin asks her to stay after class, trying to figure out what had happened over the summer, but is reduced to yelling at her when she gives him attitude.
His most detrimental mistake is losing his cool and referring to the demeanor of his two class representatives, both girls, as "skanky" when he finds that they revealed information from a faculty meeting to another student. The incident escalates, and the student whose information was disclosed, already a kid with a lot of problems, accidentally cuts the eyebrow of Khoumba with his backpack in an attempt to get away from Marin.
The Class is both technically and inherently different from other coming-of-age classroom movies. The common model is a teacher who runs into a wall with a disobedient class, who exerts a lot of effort and understanding and ultimately wins his students over through some inspirational speech. Both teacher and class learn to love each other. This is not The Class at all. With almost all of the film taking place within the school, we only get the picture of what happens at school, not the problems at home. We know that these kids have gone through tough times through the dialogue and events that take place in the classroom.
Additionally, there is no soundtrack. Music is rarely heard in the movie, giving the film a more real, earthy feel and allowing us to focus on what is being said. The absence of music and the way the movie was filmed endows it with a documentary-like style. It seems real to us, because it is real.
Marin is not the teacher-turned-savior of these children. Some of them do fall through the cracks. The Class isn't a fairy tale, but a real-life mirror of what education often is.
The film ends when the school year ends. Summer is upon them, and on the last day of school, the teachers play a makeshift soccer match with some kids. The rest of the students form a loudly cheering crowd. Everyone is happy. The closing shot is of an empty classroom with desks somewhat disordered, chairs tucked sloppily in. The happy yells of the children outside are heard from the empty classroom. Life goes on when school ends. Everything is not lost.
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