When Maria backs down on the cake-smuggling request, Marek (Csongor Kassai), the airport accountant, is so relieved that he offers to drive her to her country cottage, seemingly oblivious that he’s being pressed into a different kind of service.
#MOVIE THE TEACHER 2016 MOVIE#
While somewhat on the nose as allegory, the movie deftly illustrates that a culture of collaboration - whether in Bratislava in the 1980s or, indeed, any political or workplace context - requires active participation, even if subconscious. It’s clear she has no regard for her class’s well-being or education. Maurery has great fun with the character, a tricky part because Maria nearly always maintains a kindhearted veneer, even at her most venal. These range from the menial (fixing her washing machine) to the potentially ruinous (smuggling a cake to Moscow by plane, which could cost a father who works at the airport his job). Using the children’s grades as leverage, Maria plans to blackmail the parents into favors. Set in Bratislava in 1983, when Czechoslovakia was under Communist rule, the movie centers on a new teacher, Maria Drazdechova (Zuzana Maurery), who, upon meeting her students, asks for their parents’ lines of work. Sparse, lean, and to-the-point, Jarchovský and Hřebejk’s The Teacher offers up a lesson best not forgotten.“The Teacher” is a foray into Slovak-language filmmaking by the industrious Czech director Jan Hrebejk, and for the occasion, he and his regular screenwriter, Petr Jarchovsky, have chosen a premise that sets up a dark satire about governance and human nature. While the action is mostly limited to scenes in classroom and apartments, the era is faithfully re-created. The Teacher is set in 1980s Bratislava (and dialogue is, appropriately, in Slovak), with location filming effectively covering the area. Drazděchová.īut young Tamara Fischer gives the standout performance here, as a student and hopeful gymnast who unwittingly becomes the object of the titular character’s scorn.
Peter Bebjak is particularly effective as a man whose wife has fled the country and now earns the unwanted affections of Mrs. In supporting roles, Ondřej Malý, Martin Havelka, and many others offer up believable performances as parents affected by the teacher’s actions – on both sides of the spectrum. And elsewhere, this system of exchanging favors for services might have been commonplace, and without such negative connotations. While focusing on this particular case a teacher misusing her position for personal gain through the communist system, the film also represents a microcosm of what was happening on a grander scale throughout the country during the era. Like us, they realize there’s something bad going on here, but precious few are willing to do anything about it. Drazděchová is clearly in the wrong – but that’s also reflected in the sensibilities of the characters onscreen.
There’s a bit of a one-note, one-sided vibe throughout The Teacher – Mrs. No surprises: their sons and daughters are scoring poorly on exams, reprimanded, and even singled out in class. And her pupils are being put to work cleaning her flat instead of other after-school activities.Īnd then there are the parents that don’t play ball. Drazděchová is giving some inside advice to parents she’s getting friendly with, and even letting them know exactly what their children should be studying to prepare for upcoming tests.
And most are happy to oblige.īut soon Mrs. It begins fairly innocently, with a favour here and there from a parent who can provide some help. Drazděchová plans to do with this information.
#MOVIE THE TEACHER 2016 DRIVER#
Those occupations run a wide spectrum from doctor and lawyer to beautician, handyman, and taxi driver gradually, the filmmakers reveal what Mrs. Drazděchová, widow of a Soviet official of some distinction who also has a sister in Moscow, begins the first day of school by asking her pupils to introduce themselves with two pieces of information: their names, and their parents’ occupation. In an inventive opening sequence, students arrive for the first day of school while their parents come to the same classroom months later for an overview of her actions. The Teacher is played by Zuzana Mauréry, and her story of misdeeds is told largely in flashback after a particularly heinous act has resulted in school officials calling a meeting with parents of her students. A teacher misuses her students in order to obtain favors from their parents in Soviet-era Czechoslovakia in the early-1980s-set The Teacher, the latest drama from directing-writing team Jan Hřebejk and Petr Jarchovský.
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