The Hip Opinion

A novel, “Entre les Murs,” by a French schoolteacher named Francois Begaudeau became a 2008 French film directed by Laurent Cantet. Called “The Class” in the U.S., it stars Begaudeau himself as Francois Marin, a thin, 30-something pedagogue in a multi-racial urban school, and if you think inner city schools aren’t close to being a serious joke, this picture has news for you. The public institution here is a multicultural slagheap, wherein Marin, though dedicated, has no love and not much respect for his teenaged students. Understandably called “clowns” by another teacher more harried than Marin, the kids are mouthy, low-achieving whites, French Africans, Muslims, et al. Yes, some learning does take place in the school, but as well there is Marin advising a history teacher not to introduce to Marin’s charges the subjects of Voltaire and the Enlightenment because they’ll find them too tough. Thus low standards are insisted on.

Cover of The Class (Entre Les Murs)

Teachers in “The Class” are likable–they’re played by actual teachers just as the students are played by actual students–but are forced to play the establishment’s games regarding pupil discipline. It means nothing for Marin to have to take contemptuous Souleymane (Franck Keita) to the principal who will only question and admonish him. Nothing worse will happen–this time, at least. The school’s absurdity apropos of meetings and student representatives paves the way for Marin’s losing his temper and telling two girls, the student representatives, that they behave like “skanks.” Interestingly, he never apologizes for this. In truth Marin is compelled to become a moral eunuch. He can make few moves, is virtually impotent.

The film invites us to wonder what kind of country present-day France is, really. What will it be tomorrow? Its liberalism seems unsustainable. Is it fast developing into a no-smoking, no school-discipline society (a woman enjoins Marin to put out his cigarette in an empty cafeteria)? The good news, to me, is that there is the threat of expulsion at the school. It hangs over the unruly Souleymane. Curious: a student tells Marin that if the boy is expelled he will not be able to stay in Paris, but rather his father will take him to live in Mali. Does this horrify a contemporary liberal? A (rebellious) Malian boy in France having to live in an African country? If so, why? Isn’t Africa SUPERIOR to the West? Ah, yes: unsustainable liberalism. In 2003 Tony Blair declaimed, “As Britain knows, all predominant power seems for a time invincible but, in fact, it is transient. The question is: What do you leave behind?” What, pray tell, will the France of Cantet’s film leave behind?

“The Class” was co-written by Cantet, a brilliant artist, with Robin Campillo and Begaudeau. Its informal, plotless nature somewhat mitigates the film’s gravity and implications, but power is there even so. So is mild satire. Mainly, however, it’s a very evenhanded work about a very disturbing school.

This is guest post by my bro Dean D