Movie characters live by different rules than us mere mortals, with our imperfect teeth, dissatisfied-ever-afters and professional boundaries (the latter a seemingly alien concept to Hollywood). There, unorthodox teachers are rewarded with loving refrains of “Oh Captain, my Captain,” while over-sharing therapists can openly embrace their sobbing charges, emotively repeating “It’s not your fault.” There, love trumps logic, and platitudes trump protocol.
Phillipe Falardeau doesn’t live in such an airbrushed world. His school-based examination of grief, loss and the complexities of student-teacher relationships is a beautifully subtle and slow-burning drama that overflows with the unjust realities of real life, with all its complexities and constraints.
Starring the wonderful Mohamed Fellag as Bachir Lazhar, a traditionalist Algerian teacher who takes over a Montreal class still reeling from the on-campus suicide of their last instructor, Falardeau lets his story unfold slowly and naturally. As Lazhar’s personal struggles drag him through the murky depths of geopolitical upheaval, religious persecution and personal loss, he must also help two young students Alice and Simon (Sophie Nelisse and Emilien Neron, both magnificent) understand their own violent sense of loss and confusion after discovering their dead teacher.
But always from a distance. Though entrusted to educate, protect and mold these young minds, he’s told by parents not to raise them, by psychologists not to emotionally engage with them, and by school administrators not to touch them. It makes teaching them, notes a colleague, “like dealing with radioactive waste.”
And so when 11-year-old Simon breaks down, guilt-wracked, while discussing the death of his teacher and repeatedly begs “It’s not my fault, right?”, he gets neither hugs nor answers from Lazhar. Because in real life, sometimes we’re not allowed to provide the former, and can’t provide the latter.
Natural, layered and often haunting, Monsieur Lazhar is a consistently beautiful lesson in loss and learning.