To Be and To Have: To learn and to teach

Reviewer: Liz Hille
Rating (out of 5): ****

The beautifully shot film To Be and To Have started, admittedly, a little slow for me, but bit by bit I became hypnotized. French documentarian Nicolas Philibert takes us through a year in George Lopez's classroom--about a dozen kids, ages 4-11--in a rural section of Auvergne. Anyone who's taught is familiar with the chaotic scenes presented, and Philibert does a spectacular job of catching the quiet, banal moments that, when looking closer, are actually sublime. Nothing special happens in class: there are fights, dictations, distraction, but the patient and direct way Lopez deals with the kids is at the center of the film. He doesn't coddle nor lie to them, instead, he lovingly prepares them for the harsher world they'll soon be entering (for some, that's a larger, bureaucratic middle school).

Philibert edited something like 600 hours of raw footage, whittling the film down to its mere 90 minutes. The camera rarely ventures out of the classroom, but when it does, it enters the homes of a few students, which helps give shape to the kids' lives. These glimpses into the worlds outside the classroom indicate the kind of care that exists between the town's families and Lopez. Though the families and Lopez practice different kinds of pedagogy (one family goes for the head-smack-when-you're-wrong-kind), it's clear that Lopez's instruction is respected and education is valued. Supporting this is the one brief interview with Lopez near the end of the film where we learn about his background, which isn't very different from his students, and why he decided to teach. The film isn't commenting on the state of education in France or the difficult lives of farm children; rather, it's showing how one man can profoundly affect and shape young minds.

Philibert captures Lopez's life day-to-day, and there's a meditative quality amidst the rumpus and lessons, but it's not until the final, poignant scene where Lopez's demeanor finally cracks open and in his expression we see the full extent of why he's so invested in teaching. It's his artistry.