Monsieur Lazhar(2012)- User Reviews

This movie is just amazing. Everyone should see it. Parents can take their kids (and have discussions about it), and teachers and administrators should see it, for starters. But I don't have kids and just went with my girlfriend and we both sat for quite a while in the theater as did so many after it was over. It shows so well what happens when all the layers of feelings about a traumatic event, in this case one that occurs in an elementary school, are not worked through. The acting of everyone is amazing but those kids will stay in your mind for days afterward. The "teacher", who takes over for the one who commits suicide (it is barely shown as it is so much more important how everyone deals with it) is a man who has come from Algeria to Canada and is worried he will be deported, seems to know better than all the other characters that something more needs to happen with these kids. I don't want to say too much as the way this story evolves in the mind of the audience is important. Suffice it to say, the Algerian "teacher" has quite a story as well. There is politics here as well, cultural as well as those of emotions. Please do yourself a favor and see this. I was lucky enough to see it in a special program at a film institute. I hear, thankfully, it has a distributor. So many films made in foreign countries that are great like this never get here.