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The International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy  |
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Film Reviews
Review of “Monsieur Lazhar”
The themes of loss, guilt and identity are gradually explored. Nothing is quite what it appears. Rules and regulations around physical contact with pupils initially designed to protect children hinder normal spontaneous communication. Monsieur Lazhar with his own secrets sees how very alone some of his pupils are. His methods of teaching are very traditional, desks in rows rather than semi-circles but there is solace and containment in his formality. Colourful open-plan classrooms do not equate with emotional openess and it is this formal man who enables the children to give words to their feelings. It is the content rather than the frame that matters. The performances given by the two central children are remarkable and utterly authentic. There is Simon (Emelien Néron) who feels blamed and guilty and Alice (Sophie Nelisse) whose maturity does not disguise how much she misses and needs her busy mother.
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by John Farnsworth
The archetype of asylum films may still be One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Jim Marbrook’s Mental Notes, by contrast, creates a warm, sustaining rapport with its audience, despite the decades of devastating institutional abuse it depicts. New Zealand followed the international model of incarceration. The ‘Bins’, as inmates called them, slowly became, over the twentieth century, the depositories of human suffering, professional incompetence and bureaucratic indifference. Called such appealing names as Cherry Farm or Sunnyside, they housed a range of treatments from the barbaric, including mass ECT, to the sedative (long-term Deep Sleep Therapy). This is the world Mental Notes opens up. It does so with a potency, a touching grace and moments of black humour. Five survivors – three inmates, a psychiatrist and a Maori nurse – relate their experiences from both sides of the locked ward. There’s no voice-over, no presenter, just their own presence. As we wander with them through their former homes, now silent and derelict, the shared engagement is powerful. We encounter the cells and wards firsthand. As one Lake Alice survivor recalls, ‘you started naked in a cell with a Perspex door.’ Another locks us down, shouting commands through the door, re-enacting the clanging sounds of incarceration. The impact is simultaneously chilling, quirky and intimate. The historical stills are poignant and the retelling of ruined lives heartbreaking.
Dr. John Farnsworth Trailer for film:http://www.flicks.co.nz/trailer/mental-notes/4862 |
Monsieur Lazhar is a French Canadian film, directed by Phillipe Falardeau, that was nominated for the Best Picture in a Foreign Language at this year’s Academy Awards. It is a deceptively simple film that touches on some of the complex issues that we work with as psychotherapists. It is set in a middle school in Montreal where a popular form teacher, Martine, has committed suicide in her classroom. Her body is seen hanging from the rafters by two of the children, Simon and Alice, just before the school day begins. Monsieur Bashir Lazhar is the Algerian teacher who takes over her class when no other teacher applies for the job. It gradually emerges that he too has his own ghosts and traumatic memories. Despite the presence of a school psychologist, the school and teachers cannot really grasp the impact of what has happened to the children and the desecration of their safe space. 
That formerly invisible, disenfranchised humans so willingly disclose themselves to us is a revelation and a relational accomplishment. Moment by moment, we become absorbed witnesses to their resilience and leave strangely enriched by the experience.