Monsieur Lazhar

directed by  Philippe Falardeau (2011)

Based on a play by Evelyne de la Cheneliere, this award winning French language flick stars Mohamed Fellag, as an Algerian refugee in Montreal who takes on the job of teaching a grade 6 class traumatised by the suicide of their teacher.  Although, there are a lot of children in this film, it isn't full of your typical Hollywood kids mugging for the camera.  It's realistic kid acting with a well done story that garnered enough respect that it was selected as Canada's offering for the Oscars.  It made it to the final 5, only to lose out to the Iranian selection, A Seperation. Monsieur Lazhar is an interesting man who has his own issues and wisdom that he brings to the classroom.

Seriously though, what the hell?  A teacher hangs herself in the middle of a work day, IN THE CLASSROOM while the kids are at recess?  Jayzus. 

Aside from that dramatic premise and beginning, about the only thing I had a hard time with was the fact that Monsieur Lazhar was able to get a job as a substitute teacher.  There's no way that would happen, at least not in a well run school.  Credentials and references would for sure get checked, and I thought the racism aspect was glossed over some as immigrants are treated with suspicion in most every society, especially Muslim folk in Western countries in a post 9-11 world.  Terroriste!  These are fairly quibbling problems though as it's not really about the immigrant experience, it's much more about the aftermath of trauma.  Monsieur Lazhar didn't need to be an immigrant, he just needed to be a survivor of trauma.

At first I was convinced this was the same school from David Cronenberg's The Brood, but that was filmed in Toronto, and this one takes place in Montreal.  I guess it's more the atmospheric dread in the scholastic setting that felt similar. The Brood's murderous rage babies going to pick up their sister, and incidentally murdering the teacher created the same feeling of wrongness I got from the aftermath of this film's suicidal teacher. 

The movie has an over arcing message of surmounting tragedy, and it's not done in a trite or melodramatic way.  The kids have gone through something terrible and so has Monsieur Lazhar.  He is able to show his charges that the way through those feelings is not to pretend death and despair don't exist, but to acknowledge and go on in spite of them.   It's a good flick.