Thursday Movie Picks - Teacher Movies

Written as part of the blogathon hosted weekly by Wandering Through the Shelves. If you haven't already, you should join us by picking three movies that relate to the week's theme and telling us about them.

My father was a high school French and Spanish teacher for twenty-four years before becoming a vice principal. My mother became a middle school social worker after working in a hospital for years. So I have a special place in my heart for films that look at the adult side of schools. I've already used some good ones in previous weeks (Dead Poet's Society, Take the Lead, Hamlet 2). These are three of my absolute favorites.

Mr. Holland's Opus (Stephen Herek, 1995) Glen Holland is a composer trying to start a family. Since there aren't exactly a whole lot of regular jobs for composers, he takes a job as a high school music teacher to make some money. What he didn't expect was that the job would take over his life, to the point that he becomes more invested in his students (including young Alicia Witt, Terence Howard, and Jean Louisa Kelly) than his son, who (of course - this being a melodrama and all) happens to be deaf. Richard Dreyfuss is great in the lead, aging Holland believably from the 50s through the 90s, and Gleanne Headley is incredibly sympathetic as his wife.

Entre les murs (Laurent Cantet, 2008) Everything about Laurent Cantet's film (titled The Class in English-speaking countries) is risky: the students are real kids, not actors, it was based on an autobiographical book by a teacher in an average French school, that teacher plays himself in the film, and it's shot like a documentary, despite being more or less scripted. So if The Class feels more true to life than other school films, that's because it is. In every possible way. Neither M. Marin nor his students nor the other teachers are perfect - they all make mistakes, even when they know in the moment that they're wrong. The dialogue in the classroom is more stimulating, and teaches the audience more about the current state of France (and possibly the world), than any other film ever made. FULL DISCLOSURE: I attempted to read the book on which this was based, and found it SO dry. The film, thankfully, is anything but. The fly-on-the-wall documentary style is an inspired choice, making everything feel like it's buzzing with energy.

School of Rock (2003, Richard Linklater) Far and away the best (read: least annoying) Jack Black has ever been, largely because he plays off the kids so well. This is slightly bending the rules a bit, as Black's character, Dewey Finn, isn't actually a teacher but a washed-up never-was rock band leader. He may be a terrible, lazy son of a bitch, but when he pretends to be his best friend to take a substitute teaching job at a prestigious prep school (he's also broke), it turns out he's a pretty good music teacher. He's also selfish, turning the kids into a band to compete in a local Battle of the Bands to prove to his old band that he's better than they are. The kids (including a young Miranda Cosgrove) are adorable, Black interacts with them brilliantly, Sarah Silverman is hilarious in a bit part (Dewey's best friend's girlfriend), and Joan Cusack is at her Cusack-ian best as the principal of the school.