New York Film Festival: The Class

We may or may not have our first presidential debate tonight, and we may or may not still have a functional banking system, but one thing that appears certain is that the 46th New York Film Festival will begin tonight at Lincoln Center. I'll be blogging about some of the selections over the coming days and weeks.

This year's NYFF opens with tonight's screening of French director Laurent Cantet's The Class, winner of the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes festival. Set at a high school in Paris's 20th arrondissement, The Class is built around the interactions between François, a teacher played by François Bégaudeau, who also wrote the film's script as well as the book on which it's based, drawing from his own real-life teaching experience. The bulk of the movie consists of a series of tightly framed, briskly edited classroom scenes that capture the rhythm of the relentless back-and-forth between François and his students. The initial takes of these classroom scenes were shot with three cameras running concurrently, one on François and two on his students, and Cantet frequently built scenes around material improvised by his cast of nonprofessionals during these first takes.

It's an effective method, with the semi-improv'd acting largely keeping it real, even as the film isn't above the occasional plot contrivance to move the story along. The Class has a lot to say about the nature of rules, specifically about how excessive reliance on rigid principles and policies can escalate situations to the ultimate detriment of all concerned. And it has what may be the best summary of Plato's Republic I've ever heard.

I'll have another post later today or early tomorrow about a few of the other films showing this weekend.