Rpgcatech Disapointment

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Verity Robins Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

heislloyd This film manages to pull off an unusual double: it is both boring and hellish. It is very slow, and very little happens, and most that does happen happens several times. It is about dull people in a dull world, doing nothing of merit or novelty.So much for the boring aspect of it, now on to the hellish:- The job of a psychotherapist is to convince people that they need his help in the first place, and then to convince them if they come to him that they are being helped by him, even if he is (as statistics consistently reveal) not helping at all. Similarly, the job of the teacher in this documentary is to convince the viewer that he is a nice, patient, caring man. This way, he gets to come across well, and the film-makers have a hero.The teacher we see in this film and the film-makers behind the camera are presumably sadistic uncaring bastards. Several times in this film we see a scene in which the teacher has isolated one pupil from the rest, and sets him up in front of the unforgiving and ever-judging camera, and slowly pushes him and pushes him until eventually he cracks and bursts into tears. For those who enjoy child psychological torture porn, this is a feast. For others, imbued with some modicum of empathy and perception, this is hellish. I wanted step into the picture and rescue those poor children from his vile clutches. All the time, he is selling himself to the viewer and the child as kind and gentle, and all the time he is anything but. The film makers do not intervene. Instead, the camera is rock steady on its tripod, out-staring the children, and intimidating them. All the director has to do is wait, and he will get his golden moment of child tears.The children in this film are not bright, or at least, not the ones the editor has chosen to show us. Again, several times we see a child picked on and humiliated for the camera. One child counts to six, and then fails to say the next number, and the teacher asks him what they have been working on all morning. The boy is told the answer a few times, but still cannot repeat it. I think if I were four years old and had a film crew, a teacher, and the rest of my class all looking at me like that, I might too be intimidated into silence. At another point, a boy is pushed over and bursts into tears. He is four. When the film came out he would have been about five, when the DVD came out he would have been about six. He was sentenced to a childhood of being the one who was pushed over and burst into tears. A newspaper report says that since the film came out, nine of the eleven children featured have sued the film makers for compensation for trauma.There is another scene in which one boy is at home trying to do his maths homework and is having trouble. More and more members of his family step in to try to help, and the way the scene is cut strongly suggests that none of them can solve the one problem that the little boy has been set. I strongly suspect that the editor has made them look dimmer than they really were. We urban film-going intellectuals are treated to an opportunity to laugh at the stupid rustics. Okay, the boy is bit dim, and his family is a bit dim - I get it - but there is no need to rub anyone's face in it.The teacher is forever fishing for compliments, both from the pupils and the viewers. To watch this smug man go utterly unchallenged was near unbearable. No one questions his methods or his authority. The parents all seem to defer to him, and to the children he is all-knowing. The school actually has two teachers, but the second one is almost entirely ignored. We are invited to feel sorry that the man is retiring. I am disappointed that he wasn't sacked thirty years ago. That he has no children of his own and is apparently single is not investigated. There may be very good or very bad reasons for this.I say that the people who write in other reviews that the perpetually black-clad teacher is saintly, the school idyllic, and the film charming, have been successfully conned. That was clearly the intent of the film makers, and that they have succeeded with so many people is praise-worthy in terms of film-making technique, but utterly condemning in terms of morality.If you hated school, as very many (most, I suspect) people did, then this film is a disturbing reminder of the sheer hellishness of it all. It is reasonable to suspect that the people who chose to see a film about school days are a sample biased towards those who liked school and were blind to its dark side.I can recall one shot that I enjoyed: a small boy, looking quite content and able, driving a massive tractor on his family's farm.

treeline1 This enchanting French documentary follows a year in the life of a teacher and his students in a one-room country school. The children, ranging in age from 4 to 11, display no awkwardness in front of the camera, but go about their days dealing with the agonies of times tables, the mysteries of learning to write, the thrill of flipping crepes, and the challenges of getting along. The teacher has the wisdom and dedication of a saint, in sharp contrast with a parent who is shown slapping her son during a homework session.I heartily recommend this film to future, present, and past teachers; it will certainly open remind you of the innocence and value of each child and will inspire you to do your best. This is a rare and wonderful documentary that will have you laughing and also reaching for the tissues. With English subtitles.

G K To Be And To Have is a film every teacher should see, and every parent, too. It's a documentary that traces a year in the life and career of 55-year-old George Lopez, a traditionally minded teacher, and his mixed-age class of 13 pupils in rural France.The film is an assiduous, patient documentary that assembles the life of a small school over a year in its remarkable detail. Director Nicolas Philibert obtains relaxed, candid footage from its charming children; in Lopez he has unearthed a gem of a subject. To Be And To Have won several awards, including the 2003 Sacramento French Film Festival Audience Prize.

R. Ignacio Litardo I found this film simply irritating. I can't think why it should be "required viewing" like some reviewers claim. Maybe for those who are into teaching, who absolutely LOVE kids and for those who do rural sociology (I must be forgetting some other trade). But for most of us, it only shows how difficult it must be to teach VERY young kids. And how vital that role is. As Kim Anehall puts so well in Amazon: "To Be and to Have offers some true insights on the job as teachers should be regarded as everyday heroes in the last line of defense in a developing society".I think that the director Philibert never "scrapes below the surface" of the teaching process itself, leaving us instead with plain empiria. And the "lessons" seems staked, like if Mr. Lopez would like to prove how good he is at teaching, and as a person. But, as a reviewer notes, the camera shows very clearly when the kids have learnt their lesson, and when they don't (which is most of the times).The stark contrast of the "conditons of life" in France compared to any underdeveloped country is painful. The teacher drives a big Audi (!), the schools themselves are nice and lofty, and they all have all the necessary equipment. The kind of things people take for granted on the developed world. I'd love to have this system back in my country, Argentina. Specifically, in the "conurbano bonaerense", where teachers aren't paid for months, pupils go to school basically to have a meal their parents can't afford back home, and violence is the rule of the game.I laughed with one American reviewer when he said that probably JoJo would be medicated in the US... If you want to know about different methods of education you could always watch for instance Kiarostami's "Where Is the Friend's Home?" to learn how the other half of the world lives.The cinematography is very nice.I agree with another Amazon reviewer Matt Curtin (Columbus, OH USA) on the Lopez'saga of suits: "That he would later claim that he was due some additional compensation that was never part of the deal reminds me of his interaction with young JoJo (...) even our greatest teachers are still ultimately human, complete with their own weaknesses. Perhaps the final lesson is that even disappointment is a part of life".Same goes for the great Manohla Dargis on the LA Times: "Apparently, the French are not so very different, after all".