Jan. 25, 2012 - Issue #849: Blind Date

Monsieur Lazhar

A Montréal elementary school teacher suicides during recess. Two of her pupils, a boy and a girl, see the body hanging from the rafters. Everybody's torn up. There are disagreements between staff and parents about how to deal, or in some cases not deal, with the trauma. Before the fresh coat of paint slapped on the dead teacher's classroom walls is dry a stranger swoops in looking to fill her position. He gives the principal the hard sell. Yet he seems very respectful, charming, highly qualified and candid about the fact that he needs the work. Can he start right away?


Monsieur Lazhar is front-loaded with such obviously topical sources of conflict—Bashir Lazhar, the new teacher, is an Algerian immigrant who may or may not actually be entitled to work in Canada and has some violence in his past he's not talking about—one could be forgiven for assuming this film, much of which is confined to school property, to be didactic or self-important. But, as directed by Hull-born cineaste Philippe Falardeau (La moitié gauche du frigo, Congorama), this adaptation of Évelyne de la Chenelière's one-man play forces very little. Falardeau's approach is naturalistic, unfussy and patient. His focus is resolutely on the characters, virtually all of whom have backstory to be mined, even the kids. The esthetic feels much closer to the French cinema than that of French Canada (and Lazhar seems something of a Francophile himself—he tries in vain to get little kids to translate Balzac), which tends to be far more eager to strut style (see Café de flore). Perhaps that's part of the reason why it snagged the Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, just the most recent in a series of accolades that include Best Canadian Feature at TIFF, placement in Canada's Top Ten, a Genie nomination for Best Picture and the Best Canadian Film Award from the Toronto Film Critics Association.

That's a lot of hype to live up to, and Monsieur Lazhar is far too modest a picture to please certain viewers who'll see it demanding to have their minds blown and probably just looking for another opportunity to dismiss Canadian cinema. That's a compliment. The sort of Canadian works working hard to blow our minds tend to be pathetic imitations of Hollywood movies anyway. Monsieur Lazhar is content to go about its business with dignity and simplicity, courting an international audience instead of pandering to a national one. The film navigates its way through its inherent social commentary quite deftly—there's a sharpened polemic surrounding the stifling inability of teachers to touch kids, even just to offer gestures of comfort, in this age of knee-jerk litigation. And Mohamed Saïd Fellag is very good as Lazhar, only lightly eccentric and just the right amount of cagey. He earns our sympathy by openly expressing his desire to get the kids to talk about their grief and confusion, yet he won't share his own. So the mystery at the heart of Monsieur Lazhar is born of a very complex question concerning what one needs to go through to get on with life, whether in the middle of it or at the very beginning.
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