A substitute teacher tries to stress to his class the
importance of thinking for themselves. And a failing school is plagued by
loneliness and struggle.
Each of the characters feel alone and undervalued and they’re
aware that it’s unlikely to change. Meredith (Betty Kaye) is a student and she’s quite
creative but her father dismisses her photography and wants her to work harder
and lose weight. After a few of Henry’s (Adrien Brody) lessons, she wants to
open up to him and share how she’s feeling. But she can’t and she eventually
kills herself at school. There’s no one she can talk to and she can see no way
out of how she’s feeling. The film uses parents’ night to hammer home the
absence of parents in the lives of the children; not a single parent shows up
for it. If they’re not willing to make the effort to hear about how their
children are doing in school then they’re clearly failing to take an interest
at home. Teachers can only do so much, children need their parents to play an
active role in their lives.
Henry meets a very young prostitute and he lets her stay in
his house. He cares for her without being condescending and she comes to be
less aggressive and more trusting. They buy each other gifts and make breakfast
for each other and they grow quite comfortable together. But Henry has
difficulty forming any kind of attachment and he knows she can’t stay with him
forever, so he phones a foster care facility to come and take her away. She’s
devastated, as is he, but it seems like it was good for her.
In class, Henry stresses that the kids have to think for
themselves and to form their own opinions. To rely only on what you’ve been
told for your understanding of the world is to become insignificant. You have
to question everything and read as much as you can. The teachers aren’t to
blame for what goes on in schools, they’re just doing the best they can with
what they’ve got. There needs to be more freedom for expression so
that the kids can find out who they are. I understand there has to be some
rigidity in the curriculum but if you make every student learn the same things
in the same way with no allowances for individuality then you end up with
children who have no interest in what they’re learning. And in fact, I’d say
they’re not learning anything, they’re just memorising enough to pass exams.
There’s too much importance placed on grades and not enough placed on learning,
so all the joy goes out of it and that’s why you end up with so many young
people killing themselves over exams.
Really liked this film and how it highlighted the loneliness
and insignificance felt (at some time or another) by everyone.
