THE '80s, HIGHSCHOOL AND "THE BREAKFAST CLUB"

I thought long and hard about what to include in “nostalgia” week. I have quite a few – cinematically very important – period pieces lying around just waiting to be reviewed (I am, it must be said, shamefully behind on my review-writing. This is particularly sad because I am by no means behind on my viewing so some projects have had to be abandoned because I couldn’t remember them with sufficient clarity. I feel guilty, you can probably tell. It won’t happen again.) Then I thought, which is the one period that we all remember, think about and discuss be it with fond or not so fond memories… High school. And I have, close to hand the high school movie that almost single handedly started the genre up. It is a cornerstone in any case and a wonderful little time-capsule from the ‘80s. Its name has been sort of forgotten but when you watch it you realize that so many films after it have been modeled round it that its spirit definitely lives on. I am talking about The Breakfast Club.
In every high school – or most of them anyway – there is at least one teacher that is hot stuff on discipline and this school is no exception. Saturday morning, 7.00 a.m. sees five students seated in the library for detention. They seem to be a cross-cut of the school, one of them is slightly mad, one is the school “jock” from the wrestling team, one of the geeks, one of the popular girls and the school trouble-maker. Trapped in school together for nine hours on a weekend is no fun, not least because these five are from completely different “worlds” in high school terms. By the end of the day however, a lot will have changed and the five “criminals” may have learned more than they ever expected to…
Yes, I know the whole trope of unlikely characters coming together and figuring out they are not so different after all isn’t exactly new. The thing is though; this film is one of the first “high school films” that explored this. It’s other major advantage over its copies is the fact that thanks to good directing and strong acting from the young cast, the film is able to explore the whole high-school world with greater honesty bordering on brutality. It’s like I say about nostalgia, we mostly look back at high school with memories that are sometimes a lot fonder than they actually deserve to be. This film does an excellent job of reminding us of the cliques, the “boundaries” and how important it all was back then. It also has a peculiar spectacular quality that means it is very much a performance we are watching. I don’t mean this in the sense that it is difficult to form emotional bonds with the film, it isn’t at all but it is also an excellent reminder of the fact that we can never go back to high school. We can only look back in, from the outside. Whether we would actually want to go back in there or shudder at the thought is irrelevant, the point is that it is an excellent portrayal of time gone by. Think of it as a brilliant moving snapshot. With no Photoshop to smooth out the pain and the fear though…

WHAT REALLY GOES ON IN "THE CLASS"

“There are many films that chose schools as settings, but very few that are actually about life in schools. That’s the story I’m trying to tell.” This may not be word for word, but it is the basic mission statement of Laurent Cantet, director of Entre Les Murs. He was given a Palme D’or at the Cannes film festival for his troubles. Let’s take a closer look at the film, shall we?
Well, at first glance the story basically reads like the 90’s classic Dangerous Minds, only in French. François Marin, a new teacher, arrives for his first term at a high school in a poor district of the big city. The students are from all manner of different backgrounds and have all manner of different disciplinary problems. They also have a terrible attitude towards all authority figures. Monsieur Marin most definitely has his work cut out for him.
So what’s new? Why does Laurent Cantet deserve a Palme D’or for this? Well, sometimes the way a story is told is as important as the story itself. For example, would it surprise you to find out there was only one single actor in the whole film?
No, no, it’s not one of those bizarre experimental films, not in the sense you’re thinking of, anyway. Go back to Monsieur Cantet’s mission statement, what was he aiming to do? Portray real live in schools. Ok, how do you make sure you do that? You ask the experts. Psychologists? No. Students and teachers. In fact the only actor in the film plays François Marin, the rest are genuine high-school students and their teachers. For a period of about six months before the shooting began, the students (a real class in a high school in a poor area)started working with Cantet and the technical team on improvisation. Then, the situations thought up by the writers were “acted out” by the class during improvisation sessions, and the screenplay was basically formed accordingly. The other teachers are also genuine, and the various problems discussed and faced were all brought up by the teachers. The children, who really do come from all manner of different backgrounds, really do suffer from these problems.
It is strange to consider that we were all once experts on life in the classroom. Then, the moment we leave, we begin to forget. I have no doubt that Entre Les Murs will jog your memory at some point or another. It is also as accurate and touching a picture of classroom life without being a documentary that can possibly be filmed. But enough from me. Let’s see what the experts have to say…