{"id":106842,"date":"2024-03-21T10:00:45","date_gmt":"2024-03-21T10:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/?guid=86bd5323d0a1a3897c8674a967a612b0"},"modified":"2024-03-21T10:00:45","modified_gmt":"2024-03-21T10:00:45","slug":"the-teachers-lounge-review-a-chain-reaction-melodrama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/21\/the-teachers-lounge-review-a-chain-reaction-melodrama\/","title":{"rendered":"The Teachers\u2019 Lounge review \u2013 a chain-reaction melodrama"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

I<\/span>n \u2018Microcosmographia Academia\u2019, his satirical treatise on university politics, Edwardian scholar F.M. Cornford proposed that, \u201cthere is only one argument for doing something; the rest are arguments for doing nothing. The argument for doing something is that it is the right thing to do. But then, of course, comes the difficulty of making sure it is right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such are the emphatically rhetorical principles, the rules of inaction, that impel \u0130lker \u00c7atak\u2019s Oscar-nominated The Teachers\u2019 Lounge, a drama set in a German secondary school rattled by accusations of theft. For seventh-grade teacher Carla (Leonie Benesch, tediously ultra-tense), a sensitive educator who innately sees herself on the side of the students, the incidents hold the idealistic promise of a teachable moment, until her efforts to do something about them inflict irreconcilable difficulties that Cornford, who\u2019d been writing about the Cambridge scene in 1908, could have hardly foreseen. After all, nobody had smartphones back then.<\/p>\n

The staff\u2019s efforts to identify the thief leads first to violations of pupils\u2019 rights, as in a meeting between Carla, her single-minded colleagues, and two students they pressure into identifying classmates they presume to be guilty. Once one of her students is suspected, Carla believes wrongly, she surveils the teachers\u2019 lounge, leaving her laptop camera to record somebody lifting cash out of the wallet she left in her jacket. Recognizing a pattern visible on the sleeve of the shirt the apparent thief was wearing, Carla identifies secretary Ms Kuhn (Eva L\u00f6bau).<\/p>\n

Yet Kuhn denies the charges so vehemently it takes Carla by surprise and causes others to question their allegiances. Making matters worse, Carla has Kuhn\u2019s son, Oskar (Leonard Stettnisch), in class; having alienated a promising student, Carla fights to regain his trust.<\/p>\n

The idea of schools as microcosms of society, reflecting political and economic dynamics while serving as self-contradicting systems of inclusion and exclusion, is well-established. Jean Vigo\u2019s classic Zero for Conduct captures youth in revolt through anarchic interplay of realism and surrealism that honours childhood\u2019s potential; Frederick Wiseman\u2019s High School, meanwhile, was the documentarian\u2019s first study of civic engagement and social structures subsuming individuals.<\/p>\n

Less productively, more trendily, \u00c7atak\u2019s film becomes a chain-reaction melodrama: acted by self-serious types, scored by tightly wound strings, dependent on characters saying the wrong things and leaving the right ones unsaid with jaws firmly, sardonically clenched. No situation is resolved, no assumption proven; nobody\u2019s listening, just reacting as if written.<\/p>\n

Ruinous as it is, the action remains rhetorical, even as it escalates. Savvy in their choice of scenario, \u00c7atak and co-writer Johannes Duncker emerge callow and oblivious in their generic, moralistic critique of the codes of conduct governing our schools. Forecasting an abstract doomsday, they introduce an ominous countdown that never hits zero, drawing few conclusions and even less blood.<\/p>\n

Little White Lies is committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

By becoming a member you can support our independent journalism and receive exclusive essays, prints, weekly film recommendations and more.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n