If you are an educator, may I present to you the very nightmare you’ve been having every night in movie form? Director İlker Çatak, along with co-writer Johannes Duncker, tell a story of good intentions going horribly, horribly wrong in this tense pressure cooker school environment where one tries to follow the lessons they teach but forgets how few of their students are actually listening.
Leonie Benesch stars as 6th grade teacher Carla Nowak. After one of her students is accused of theft and subjected to a personal violation, her sense of justice is ignited, and she sets up a camera in the teacher’s lounge to see if the thief is among the staff. When her money is stolen and a faculty member who is also the mother of one of her students appears to be the culprit, things begin to spiral out of control rather quickly. What was supposed to be Nowak’s noble deed to bring justice and order ends up bringing nothing but chaos, disruption, and hostility to the school.
Benesch is excellent in the lead role. You can feel the palpable tension she carries into every scene. She doesn’t quite feel comfortable at the school, and her grip on her class is tenuous at best. When we first meet Ms. Nowak, she is at the front of her class, conducting them in a good morning ceremony. It’s our way of seeing how in command she is of her students, but this image is immediately shattered when she can’t protect them from an invasive (and potentially illegal) search. As the film continues, we really understand how unsuited she is in an authoritative role. She tries to backtrack her allegation when challenged, whimpers away after being confronted by the parents, and even capitulates to her students’ most brazenly disrespectful behavior. It shows a natural weakness that Nowak tries to cover up with a near-constant waning belief that she’s doing the right thing. And Benesch plays it spectacularly.
However, it is the students who are given the antagonistic role and they run with it. What the script is hinting at is the new sense of granting kids more autonomy and say in every aspect of their lives and how it would inevitably go. Students given all the information about their rights leads to them given a basis for challenging authority. It’s the idea that teaching them this thing won’t lead them to use it against me, will it? And of course, it does. The kids break from not only their instructor but the pushback of the entire school. The film ultimately leaves you conflicted. Is this a revolutionary act on the part of the students? Is it a failed attempt at understanding the complexities of adult situations that they’re not familiar with? Was it a mistake to teach them autonomy when they have such a small understanding of the world at large?
These are the questions the film asks you to grapple with, and it does a fascinating job of making you feel different ways about it. Composer Marvin Miller does an exceptional job of building all the emotion into each scene. More often his music is in direct contrast with what you’re seeing on screen depending on how you feel about certain situations. The final shot is not exactly a victory for the person in question, but the music is filled with trumpets and horns of celebration. It’s a contradictory moment, but it works so incredibly well in showing how challenging the concept of winning is especially when it comes to children. There’s another moment where the halls fill up with faculty members all wearing the same shirt as the accused did on the day in question, and again Miller’s music conveys the sense of confusion and dread that you feel as Nowak does that she has been driven to madness.
The Teacher’s Lounge is a film about knowing who you are and where you fit in the world. Sometimes, we may not fit where we think we do, and the more you force it, the more it forces you out.
The Teacher’s Lounge is currently playing in select theaters in NY and LA courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics. The film will continue to expand to additional markets in the coming weeks. The film is currently on the Oscar shortlist for Best International Film.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbUaACY8wRQ]
The Teacher’s Lounge is a film about knowing who you are and where you fit in the world. Sometimes, we may not fit where we think we do, and the more you force it, the more it forces you out.
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Phoenix is a father of two, the co-host and editor of the Curtain to Curtain Podcast, co-founder of the International Film Society Critics Association. He’s also a member of the Pandora International Critics, Independent Critics of America, Online Film and Television Association, and Film Independent. With the goal of eventually becoming a filmmaker himself. He’s also obsessed with musical theater.
