Back to school with Monsieur Lazhar

8/23/13, Monsieur Lazhar, Best Foreign Film nominee, 2011

This movie is about the things we say, the things we don't say, what we know, what we think we know and what we don't know. Monsieur Lazhar is set in Montreal, Canada, primarily in an elementary school and tells the story of a class of ten and eleven year olds after the suicide of their beloved teacher in the classroom. Two of the kids actually see her, but the incident affects all of the kids as well as the teachers. The school brings in a psychologist to meet with the kids; we never see what those meetings look like, but you get the distinct impression that nothing is really discussed. Bashir Lazhar, an Algerian immigrant, walks into the school to apply for the job; nobody else has applied and he convinces the principal to give him the job. Monsieur Lazhar has very different methods from Martine Lachance, including making the kids sit in straight rows and take dictation from Balzac (not exactly third grade material). Even though things are not quite the same, the kids do well and get used to Bashir's methods. We only get brief glimpses into Bashir's personal life, but we learn that he is a refugee and that his wife was killed in Algeria by people less than happy with her book; she was the teacher, Bashir ran a cafe. He does not share this information with anyone at the school. Bashir bonds with Alice, one of the students who found Martine, and is having trouble coping; Alice writes an essay talking about her feelings of loss, which is very expressive and provocative. Bashir wants to share it with the school, to help them in the grieving process, but Madame Vaillancourt, the principal, wants nothing to do with it, better to leave the discussion of feelings to the psychologist. Simon is the other student who found Martine and he shows his grief with violent outbursts, and is very misunderstood. Bashir and the principal clash at various times, and the final disagreement and the fact that Bashir is not actually a teacher, he has to leave the school. Because he has such an intimate understanding of what it is like to lose someone without having the chance to say goodbye, he begs for to have one more day to say goodbye to his students, and he does it in a beautiful and subtle way. The movie is only 94 minutes long, and as I was watching the time and it was coming to an end, I wanted fifteen more minutes, I wanted to know how things turn out with Bashir and the kids. But it ended. I would not necessarily recommend this movie for young kids, besides the subtitles might be too hard for them to follow, but I think older kids, thirteen and older, might be able to relate to this. This might be a good conversation starter about death, suicide and loss. It's a gentle movie and you can tell there was a lot of love in the creative process. It was taken from a play which is what contributes to the intimate feeling. Monsieur Lazhar was the Canadian entry for Best Foreign Film from 2011; A Separation was the winning film that year and it was very good. There were also a couple other films that looked very good (I have not yet been able to see them), and I think this would have been a hard vote to cast. The good thing is, you can actually watch them all and decide for yourself.