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Monsieur Lazhar

Readers be warned: it is probably impossible to avoid discussing the startling development at this film’s outset — revealed in a masterful opening scene that will likely long stick in many viewers’ memories.

I won’t spoil the unfolding of it, brilliantly directed by Phillippe Falardeau and shot by cinematographer Ronald Plante. This scene in Quebec production Monsieur Lazhar, nominated for the 2012 Oscar for best foreign film, goes to the heart of the picture, however: it’s not merely the engine that sets the tale is motion, it provides the force of entropy that must be checked for the characters’ world to be right again. This is a sometimes moving film about empathy and healing.

The story unfolds primarily at an elementary school in Montreal, where equilibrium is shattered by the suicide of a much-liked female teacher. There are established bureaucratic procedure for new hires, but then the school’s administrator (Danielle Proulx) is confronted by an unexpected development: Algerian immigrant Bachir Lazhar (Fellag) walks into her office and puts himself convincingly forward for the position.

He gets the job, but finds the classroom atmosphere tense; the kids would need time to adjust to any new teacher, but Lazhar’s somewhat old school standards and methods erect particularly demanding walls. Yet Lazhar, whom we eventually learn is a victim of personal loss himself, may be precisely the catalyst needed to break open the students’ collectively suppressed grief. 

It’s a straightforward tale, told in simple yet visually sophisticated, beautiful terms, like so many products of Quebec cinema. Plante finds aesthetic value in every setting and composition, but not merely in the sense of providing pretty pictures — he understands the whole point is to tell a story in visual terms, and he lends the narrative both gravity and grace, not merely pleasing design.

That understated elegance appropriately matches the dignity of the title character. This is really Fellag’s picture, and his middle-aged, slightly stuffy teacher is enormously sympathetic, with his high standards, his great kindness, and his dogged insistence on confronting the unresolved feelings concerning his predecessor’s departure.

Working with children is always a primary challenge for any filmmaker, but here Falardeau gets some of the best child performances I’ve seen; it’s part of the movie’s effectiveness that its children come off like real children, not cute, cloying movie children. Emilien Neron shines in particular, as the student at the centre of that opening scene, whose own internalized rage is the fulcrum of the class’s emotional state. (The entire cast is uniformly excellent, in fact, with Proulx providing a strong supporting anchor as the alternately empathetic yet harried head of school.)

All this being said, there’s also something… all-too-familiar, I think. The film’s characters are particular, its story thoughtful and involving, and yet it has only so much nuance and sense of originality within the established teacher-student movie paradigm, exemplified by the likes of Stand and Deliver and even Mr. Holland’s Opus.

On the other hand, its populist leanings may make it a modest break-out success. Monsieur Lazhar isn’t the kind of bracing, original experience that was last year’s Oscar nominee from Quebec —  Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies — but is a welcome, worthwhile entry in recent cinema.