One of the highlights of the closing weekend of the Sydney Festival is MONSIEUR LAZHAR, a Canadian GOODBYE MR CHIPS by way of TO SIR WITH LOVE.
Nominated in this year’s Oscars as best foreign language film, this concise and coruscating movie belies its stage origins and stands as a fully fledged film experience.
Produced by the dynamic duo of Kim McCraw and Luc Dery, the producing pair responsible for last year’s searing INCENDIE, MONSIEUR LAZHAR is based on a one character play by Evelyne de la Cheneliere and written for the screen and directed by Phillipe Falardeau.
The story is set in Montreal where a shocking incident has left a year six class devoid of a teacher. An Algerian immigrant, Bachir Lazhar, applies for the gig and is hired.
Lazhar is very “old school” when it comes to teaching French and his more formal approach brings him into conflict with some of his pupils and their parents.
But most of his students warm to him, responding to his innate humanity, and fellow staff members endorse his more traditional approach as well.
Discipline and succour, so prone to the excesses of political correctness in schools now, are thrown into the practical spotlight by a provocative thoughtfulness that transcends trendy platitudes.
“Today you work with kids like radioactive waste”, laments a colleague, a sports teacher who dare not touch a child even when its patently obvious physical guidance can only aid sports acuity.
A parent teacher interview shows the contemporary chasm that has opened between these two pivotal players in children’s development, a relationship that teeters on the contemptuous.
As Lazhar seeks to educate les enfants he struggles to come to terms with his own precarious émigré status in this extraordinary empathetic and eloquent 90 minute drama.
In the title role is Fellag, an Algerian performer well known in Europe for his one-man stage shows. Like his character, he knows what it is like to be an exile, and this experience commensurate with his honed craft as an actor makes the characterisation all the more potent.
Pre teens Sophie Nelisse and Emilien Neron as Alice and Simon, two students most profoundly affected by the demise of their original teacher are astonishingly good amongst a class of splendid child performers.
Danielle Proulx, memorable in C.R.A.Z.Y a few years back, is terrific as the school principal tossed upon the cloudy seas of education buffeted by the gale force of bureaucracy, as is Brigitte Poupart as Claire, a sympathetic colleague of Monsieur Lazhar.
An education as well as an entertainment, MONSIEUR LAZHAR is in a class of its own.
(c) Richard Cotter
11th June, 2012
Tags: Sydney Movie Reviews- MONSIEUR LAZHAR, Sydney Film Festival, Sydney Arts Guide, Richard Cotter