The Class” walked off with the Palm d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, and it might nab a Best Foreign Film Oscar during tomorrow’s Academy Award telecast.
Glitzy awards aside, it’s a terrific film that cuts across cultural divides to reveal some of the problems facing the modern school teacher – and society as a whole.
WWTW spoke with “The Class’” director, Laurent Cantet, recently about both his film and the curious way it all came about.
Cantet didn’t have “The Class” specifically in mind when he started acting workshops with real-life students. He had already met Francois Begaudea, a teacher who had written about his own classroom experiences and who would eventually star in Cantet’s film.
The two decided to run through some dramatic exercises with students to explore just what kind of movie might come from their reactions.
“When we started the workshops in the school we didn’t know there would be a film at the end,“ Cantet says. We didn’t have any money … we wrote and improvised.“
He was sure of one thing – whatever film emerged wouldn’t resemble standard classroom features like “Dead Poet’s Society.”
He says both teachers and children “try to protect” their classroom experiences from the outside world. What he wanted “The Class” to do was peel back that protective layer and reveal the truth.
“School isn’t only a place where you learn French and mathematics and scholarly matters. You also learn how to think, how to discuss,” he says.
The film’s critics have often been teachers, who he says are a bit “afraid of what the film is showing.”
He understands the veil of silence surrounding schools today firsthand.
“I’m the father of two young kids who are in school. They don’t say anything about their own life [in the classroom]. They keep it away from me,” he says.
“The Class” isn’t the first time Cantet used improvisation to create a motion picture. But he did have an easier task when working with the students who made up the bulk of his new movie’s cast.
“[The young students] have less inhibitions. This generation, this culture doesn’t have a problem with filming, with cameras. It’s funny to realize we never told them not to watch the camera. They never did,” he says.
He began rehearsals for the movie by covering the ceiling with lights and installing three cameras and two boom mikes to capture every sight and sound.
“They just sat down and started to play,” he says of his student actors.
That approach complicated matters when it came time to edit his feature. Cantet wanted to keep the “real time” feeling of the class discussions, and viewers will find several scenes which reflect that belief without being dull or dragged out. But combing through so much rough footage took time – five months, exactly.
“The Class” reflects the problems brought on by France’s multicultural makeup, but Cantet isn’t necessarily pessimistic about the challenges facing teachers like the film’s main character, Francois, despite what you‘ll see on screen.
“I wanted to show how this diversity that is in France always seems like a problem but it can also become a richness,” he says.
(Photo: Real-life teacher Francois Begaudea – above – used his experiences in the school system to help shape the award-winning film “The Class.”)
Related posts:
- WWTW Interview: ‘I’ve Loved You So Long’ director Philippe Claudel – Part 1
- WWTW Interview: Writer/director Scott Prendergast (‘Kabluey’)
- WWTW Interview: Writer/director David Spaltro (…Around)
- WWTW Interview: Director Nick Tucker (‘Do As I Say’)
- WWTW Interview: ‘I’ve Loved You So Long’ director Philippe Claudel – Part 2
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