Entre Les Murs (Between The Walls and known as The Class in America) is a 2008 French docu-drama based on the real-life experiences of an inner-city school teacher named François Bégaudeau (played by himself under the name Mr. Marin.)
So you write this autobiographical account of problem kids in your (presumably) underfunded public school and then play yourself in the movie adaptation with a different name? Already this movie seems a little bizarre.
And it is. Hundreds of movies have been made about classroom settings, where screwed up kids are somehow made normal and educated by some random teacher. In fact, most adult movies about high schools make them out to be prisons (an accurate description if I say so myself) and every example from Sister Act 2 to Notes On A Scandal to the more recent release Precious just seem to up the ante. Make the kids as dark and troubled as possible.
Give a fat black girl an AIDS baby with Down syndrome and another on the way, impregnated by her rapist father. Make the girl stupid as hell and make her mother abusive and make it seem hopeless. Bam! Send in a lesbian teacher named Blu Rain and then, everything is better.
Which is why The Class is so out of it’s own league. None of the “problem” kids have any serious issues with drugs, sex, violence or even rock and roll. Their main issue is they’re a bunch of lazy teenagers. It’s a little more realistic and easier to relate to when the story isn’t bogged down with melodrama that most people don’t see in their high school experience. Drugs, death, etc, happens, but it’s not omnipresent.
As far as I can remember in high school, it blew as bad as being incarcerated. You couldn’t leave when you wanted, there were cops everywhere and the teachers didn’t care what you learned, so long as you passed the AIMS test (a type of educational parole) and didn’t complain. There were plenty of kids killing themselves with guns, razors or needles, but otherwise it was mostly boring. It wasn’t some kind of twisted soap opera. School is prison, sure, but it’s not exactly Oz.
In the end, the teacher in The Class really doesn’t change much in the attitude of the kids. He does a helluva good job compared to American school teachers, but he still can’t influence them deeply. So if even awful French education systems are better than American’s and can’t push this boulder uphill, maybe public school isn’t the answer.
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