Monsieur Lazhar follows a growing trend in Quebecois films getting more recognition at the Oscars, either nominated or making a shortlist, with Denys Arcand scoring a win. Monsieur Lazhar's nomination followed Incendies' the previous year, but I didn't think Monsieur Lazhar was as powerful as Incendies, and despite being Canadian, agree with the Academy's decision to hand the 2011 Foreign Language Oscar to Iran's A Separation instead.
The premise of the movie sounds vaguely familiar- a new teacher steps into a school with students from another world, and inspires them. In this case, Lazhar is an Algerian refugee who teaches at a Quebecois school after a teacher hangs herself there, and must help the students cope. The students soon do well in spite of Lazhar's high expectations.
The movie is slightly underdeveloped in explaining how Lazhar achieves his breakthrough in teaching the students, a little more puzzling considering he's not even a real teacher- his late wife in Algeria was. On that subject, I wasn't all that sympathetic to him for lying about those credentials, nor for slapping a student's head or acting insensitive about the deceased teacher from time to time (although we know very little about her, it's far likelier she was in a poor state of mental health rather than actively trying to harm the students).
That said, Monsieur Lazhar is by no stretch of the imagination a bad movie, at times being spot on in its emotion. It just turns out that A Separation and Incendies brought out more powerful emotions.
The premise of the movie sounds vaguely familiar- a new teacher steps into a school with students from another world, and inspires them. In this case, Lazhar is an Algerian refugee who teaches at a Quebecois school after a teacher hangs herself there, and must help the students cope. The students soon do well in spite of Lazhar's high expectations.
The movie is slightly underdeveloped in explaining how Lazhar achieves his breakthrough in teaching the students, a little more puzzling considering he's not even a real teacher- his late wife in Algeria was. On that subject, I wasn't all that sympathetic to him for lying about those credentials, nor for slapping a student's head or acting insensitive about the deceased teacher from time to time (although we know very little about her, it's far likelier she was in a poor state of mental health rather than actively trying to harm the students).
That said, Monsieur Lazhar is by no stretch of the imagination a bad movie, at times being spot on in its emotion. It just turns out that A Separation and Incendies brought out more powerful emotions.