I have yet to see the widely praised French film The Class, but after reading Dan Brown’s contrarian evisceration of it on Huffington Post, I may just content myself with adding it to my Netflix queue. Near the bottom. The movie has won near universal acclaim for avoiding cliches (USA Today) and “sharply observed social dynamics” (Variety). While it may be a stark departure from other schoolhouse flicks, “its stripped-down stylization and ‘gritty’ subject matter is scoring it a free pass from serious consideration of the startling hollowness of its narrative,” Brown writes.
The Class sprints away so furiously from Hollywood archetypes that it finds itself at another, equally limited pole, one populated not by miracle teachers (Dangerous Minds, Freedom Writers), but by hapless dunces; not by students waiting to be coaxed out of their shells (To Sir, With Love, Stand and Deliver) but by youths who cannot identify a single thing that they gain from school. Is there no middle ground between Jerry Bruckheimer’s sap and M. Marin’s unremitting tragedy?
For a realistic portrait of the “messy, fascinating guts of school life,” Brown recommend the documentaries I Am a Promise or Hard Times at Douglass High–focusing on a Baltimore high school.
Or maybe someone in Hollywood could just option Dan’s book.
