The Best and Worst Teacher in Film Pt. 2

Alright, kids, best pack light ‘cause this is a long one.

The Good:
Sean Connery in Finding Forrester

Finding Forrester really walks the razors edge when it comes to good teachers in film. It’s got all of the staples of sappy teacher movies: Urban youth at risk, the Caucasian mentor, an all-or-nothing cinematic climax, and sweet, sweet, interracial jailbait.

Speaking of interracial love, how much does this look like a romantic comedy poster?

There are two things that keep Finding Forrester from going from realistically sweet to movie-diabetes and that’s the complexity of the characters relationship and good acting.

The best real life student-teacher relationships are two-way streets. Almost every film about teaching forgets this, but Finding Forrester doesn’t. Sean Connery’s character is an old bastard, but he’s bored and watching the main character, Jamal, develop as a writer entertains him. Unlike a lot of movie teachers, Connery didn’t set out to change the world through teaching, he just stumbled across a kid who happens to be really good at something Connery knows a lot about. Similarly, Jamal gets a kick out of being a pain in whitey’s ass just as much as he likes having him as a mentor. This is the kind of depth of human experience that a lot films gloss over or forget entirely, but it makes or breaks this movie.

No, Dog, it is you who are the man now.

The complexity and depth of their relationship wouldn’t work without good actors, though. I can’t imagine anyone but Sean Connery in this role. He’s one of the few actors who can play both racist asshole and nurturing tutor in the same breath. Anyone else would either come off as too condescending or too eager, but Connery is neither. Rob Brown has only been in a few films, but just like Connery he plays a sweet spot that few can pull off. It’s the subtle ways that you see Jamal as a three-dimensional person that keeps his character from being the kind of interchangeable street toughs you see in similar movies.

That said, every still shot makes it look like they’re about to kiss.

The Bad:
Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society

Dead Poets Society is such a staple of the “inspiring teaching” genre that no one even questions what’s supposed to be so inspiring about it.

Oddly, “giggling while schoolboys cup your balls” is not one of this film’s IMDB tags. But it really should be.

Don’t get me wrong, Robin Williams is a fantastic actor when the director remembers to hide the cocaine. Unfortunately, in this case Peter Weir didn’t remember that in an “inspiring” film it’s usually a good idea for the characters to actually be inspired somehow.

Robin Williams renegade literature teacher sticks it to the uptight, conservative administration primarily by being slightly less uptight and conservative in comparison. He shocks the authority of the school by referencing Walt Whitman, flouts the rules by taking students outside and teaching them Latin, and spits in the eye of God by encouraging his pupils to form a literary society.

Now, Williams does have his kids rip a chapter out of their textbooks, and we get it, the setting is literally old school, but it takes place in 1959, not the Dark Ages.

Standing on desks? He’s a witch!

This film takes place in the same year the Vietnam War started, four years before JFK is assassinated, nine years before the slayings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy and a mere decade before Woodstock, and you’re telling me a prep school student’s dad is flipping a shit over his son performing Shakespeare?

Granted, I was not alive in the 1950s and cannot truly know the prevailing zeitgeist, but if Robin Williams got fired for advocating Walt Whitman, Latin, and Shakespeare, what was he supposed to be teaching? The most efficient method for torturing a confession from a suspected heretic? The proper method for balancing the humors? How to prevent the rusting of chastity belts?

This is the ultimate inspiration letdown because not only does the audience not understand what the big deal is, but neither do the characters. One student kills himself, another helps fire Williams and the others don’t really do anything, until the very end when some of them stand on their desks and recite Walt Whitman again.

In other movies borderline-retarded inner city kids get into Harvard and the best these silver spoons can do is get off their asses and remember what their teacher liked to be called. That’s either the least inspiring message ever put to celluloid or it’s the most mind-blowingly complex biblical allegory in history. You be the judge.

Any guesses which one is supposed to represent Mary Magdalene?

Next time around we’ll be looking at a couple of more recent films, Mean Girls and Precious, so get ready for me to make fun of obesity, incest, and HIV. It’ll be like if Family Guy was a blog!