Lazhar, with his unmistakable love and care for students, quickly gains the trust and affection of his students. Although his Algerian French sometimes hinders communication and his dictation from Balzac, a French realist novelist, is a little bit hard, his sincerity and warmth brush upon the traumatized students. Through this relationship between the teacher and students, this film shows various themes including trust, education, healing, and trauma.

 

Many movie fans may think, “Another teacher-student movie?” Even though movies that deal with teacher-student relationships have created the most heartwarming masterpieces that many enjoyed such as Dead Poets Society or Good Will Hunting, it is also true that the relationship has become too much of a cliché in movie themes. Fortunately, this movie is not just another teacher-student movie.

 

The most prominent element that saves this movie from becoming another old teacher-student movie is its teacher. Monsieur Lazhar is not your average teacher. Reading dictations from Balzac, he perplexes his sixth-grade students. Moreover, he orders his students to arrange their desks in an old-school linear manner. He seems to be on his “own initiative” and constantly faces friction with the parents and the principal for trying to talk about the dead teacher to his students. He also expresses frustration when he is notified that there is a zero-touch policy that forbids the teachers from touching students in any way.

 

The students in this movie are also different from those of other movies. Their popular teacher, Martine, leaves them by committing suicide and they are left in confusion. They notice that adults around them seem even more nervous and odd about the event than they are. They do not realize the emotional traumas that they are going through and eventually face these issues with their new teacher.

 

Although Lazhar’s way of education is unorthodox at the very least, his sincerity resonates with the honesty of the students. It gets us to think about what a relationship between a teacher and students is built up of. It shows us that mutual trust is what is making foundation for Lazhar and students to grow within the classroom.

 

One of the key dynamics that drives this movie both on the surface and on a deeper level is its insight into the relationship between teachers and students. This does not refer only to the relationship that Lazhar builds with his students but also relationships that students build with all teachers and adults surrounding them. When the students’ original teacher commits suicide, the first measures taken by the school board is repainting the classroom, assigning the students to a therapist, and setting up a meeting with the parents.

 

The actions taken by the adults seem like the right thing to do. Repainting the classroom was done to provide students with an environment where they can start over without having to ponder about the terrible incident. The therapist was assigned to heal and take care of any scars that students may have suffered from. The parent-teacher meeting was held to assure the parents that their children are being taken care of. They were all “reasonable” steps to take. However, this movie shows us in a very delicate manner that being reasonable and truly helping students are two different things.

 

The actions taken by the parents and other teachers were all done to simply handle the situation. It was all swift correct measures that would resolve the problem. The audiences soon figure out during the film that students need more than solutions being shoved in their faces

 

On the other hand, the children are bewildered. Notonly are they confused about the things that happened. Their classroom is repainted and there is a strange man trying to console them. For them, all the “correct” solutions are just an addition to the big pandemonium they are trying to figure out. As Alice, one of the students says in the movie, “Everyone thinks we're traumatized. It's the adults who are.”

 

Although this movie showed these two different sides of teachers and students through a reaction to a traumatic experience, it makes the audience wonder about what good education is. Much of our education is focused on learning what the teacher sees fit. The teachers believe that they are making right decisions that are best for the students but many students of our education system leave it bewildered and clueless. Lazhar is a wake-up call to the illusion that teachers and adults had about education.

 

Many readers of this article may be much older than the students in Monsieur Lazhar. As university students, we too have relationships with our professors, struggle with studying, and face challenges in the classroom. While we spent over a decade in classrooms, not many of us have figured out what good education is or what we take from these rooms. Perhaps it is not late for us to ponder about the answers to these questions, and this movie provides the opportunity. This movie turns the whole theater into another classroom and it is recommended to both students and adults.