On a cold and snowy school day in Montreal, a small sixth-grade boy, Simon, (Emillen Neron) rushes down the hall to his classroom to deliver a tray of milk to Martine, his favorite teacher. He finds the door locked and peers through the glass to see her hanging from a ceiling pipe. He is pushed back against the wall by the shock of it. As he rushes through the halls to find an adult, a girl, Alice, (Sophie Nelisse) stumbles upon the same scene. The other children coming in from recess are quickly herded back out.
The school, the parents and staff rush to contain the impact of this beloved teacher’s suicide. A child psychologist is brought in to help with the sudden wave of grief that washes over the school like an early winter’s evening.
A week later, when all steps possible have been taken to handle the impact on the children, the principal, (Danielle Proulx) rushes to fill the position as quickly as she can. No one wants the job. The suicide seems to have dampened the room with sadness, and no one wants to work there. It is repainted a bright blue, and the floors are polished as if death had left a patina of mold. But still no replacement is found.
Then one afternoon, a soft-spoken 55-year-old Algerian immigrant, Bachir Lazhar, appears and applies for the position. Monsieur Lazhar is polite and direct, with a warm smile and beautiful but pain-darkened eyes. He speaks and carries himself with old Middle East charm. He had read about the incident in the paper and wondered if the position had been filled. He has taught, he said, for 19 years in Algeria and is here in Canada seeking a new life away from the troubled region. Desperate to put the wheels back on the traumatized life of the school, the principal hires him.
Monsieur Lazhar plunges into his new life and work as a teacher. He and the students find a mutual fondness for each other despite his penchant for giving dictations on Balzac and the fables of La Fontaine. His French, of course, is different from their Canadian French, but they soon find a common ground.
The new world has other snags for our teacher. Lazhar gently corrects an unruly student with a small slap to the back of his head. He soon learns the politically correct rules of Western life: no physical discipline, no hugging or cheek kissing. In fact, no physical contact at all. It seems strange to him, but he adjusts. He needs this job. Lazhar, we will soon discover, is not just a pilgrim in search of a new world, but a man whose spirit is in the process of healing after an incredible personal tragedy.
Slowly, in a few scattered scenes, we find out more about this gentle man and a past that may have been fabricated. Lazhar has been having weekly meetings with Canadian officials, hoping to become a permanent resident. In a cold gray room with a lawyer and the officials, his personal tragedy unfolds. We learn that he seeks political asylum here because of the terrible murder of his writer wife and two children, in a fire set by political opponents she angered with her newspaper articles. It seems that her life in Algeria’s political underground was hers alone, and he, not unlike his children, had simply become the collateral damage.
Before long, even as he bonds with little Alice and the wounded Simon, and even though a fellow teacher, a sweet and earnest woman (Brigitte Poupart) tries to lure him into a sweet relationship, it’s clear that the scars of his past life are too deep.
In this, Phillippe Falardeau’s Oscar nominated best foreign film of 2012, there will be no grand physical or emotional cataclysm, only a slow unfolding of human story, an innocent lie that will at once, damage and then heal three disparate souls and all the bystanders who love them.
In fact, the film, from a one person play by Evelyne de la Chenelieres, is a ballad of healing, of the closing of the wounds of the human heart and the painful echoes that never really disappear. Monsieur Lazhar’s last closely held secret, one that will reveal an act of desperation, and the requisite courage it took to achieve it, will be revealed.
Mohamed Fellag, billed here only as Fellag, has all the gifts required of a film actor. He is a survivor of a personal tragedy and the keeper of a secret that has to be balanced with charm. He does it extremely well.
It is a long-held humorous caveat in movies, never to work with children or dogs. They can walk in and steal all the light and oxygen in a scene. This was true of Margaret O’Brien and Jackie Cooper. It has never been truer than of the two central children in this film. Sophie Nelisse’s Alice who shows incredible maturity, is star born. But Emillen Neron’s Simon, the child who is most impacted by the suicide of his teacher, shows gifts beyond his years. As Simon, he manages to keep his pain on a low burner throughout the film, until one moment in class when prodded by questions, his dam breaks and the result is a scene for the ages. No viewer can walk away from this moment unshaken.
Falardeau’s direction is calm and steady, and like his script, uncluttered. Like all good movies, the story just happens, and we are lucky to be there when it does.
J.P. Devine is a former film and screen actor.
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