By Rhiannon Miller
What makes a great movie? Is it the graphics? The actors? The plot? The location? I like to believe everyone has their own idea. In other words, to each his own. However, is there a perfect formula to making a movie that everyone loves? For instance, is there such a movie that possess wonderful eye pleasing visuals, top-notch actors, and a story line so great it evokes every known type of feeling within its viewer? Is this possible? Perhaps it doesn’t take much to make an amazing movie. Maybe simplicity is key. Making a great movie could be as easy as walking into a middle school classroom and letting the camera roll. Laurent Cantet based the film Entre Les Mur’s (the classroom), which took the Palme d’Or (the most supreme award) at the annual Festival de Cannes in 2008, on this idea.
Who would have thought that watching a classroom of kids could be so interesting?! Honestly, it wasn’t. If you’re a kid who has attended one of Racine’s public middle schools, chances are you have experienced much of what the movie shows: rowdy kids, poor administration, and a poor learning environment. For those of you who have not , a.k.a. “Prairie Lifers”, this movie may interest you if only for the sake of seeing the experience in middle schools maintaining low incomes. However, there is more to the movie than just what the title suggests. It takes you into the life of its each characters and gets to the bottom of their actions. If that’s not enough for you, at least watch it for its amazing documentary style filming. What I found especially intriguing was the script--the fact that there isn’t one! All the students’ lines are spontaneous. The way it works is rather ingenious. The school is in fact an average school and the students are actual students. The director would speak to the students, explain the scenario, offered words and suggestions and boom! It was filmed. The one exception was the teacher, who was an actor and had more input from the director of what to say. If you want to know more, the DVD includes a “behind the scenes” section where you can learn all about the process for filming. Although the movie is French, it has subtitles and is available at your local Blockbuster. I encourage you to see for yourself what it takes to make a great, award- winning movie. You may be surprised.
More information at Rotten Tomatoes
As someone who's only been studying french for a few years, I did find watching a french film about a french, french class kind of interesting... for the first 70 minutes at least. I totally agree that the cinematography and character development are top notch, but this thing DRONES on like crazy
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