Education in Rural France - Movie Review Example

The film, which will be shown this afternoon at the New York Film Festival, is a quiet, patient, and tenacious as Mr. Lopez himself, who approaches his difficult, endless work with remarkable serenity and discipline.Mr. Philibert spent nearly a year in Mr. Lopez's classroom, and he has edited some 600 hours of film into a slow, subtle chronicle that follows the cycle of the seasons, from mud to snow to green fields and warm sunshine.He ventures only rarely beyond the gates of the tiny schoolhouse into the lives of the children and their instructor.

There is a brief interview with the teacher (or ''master,'' as his pupils address him), during which he explains the combination of upward mobility and social concern that brought him, the son of a migrant laborer from Spain, into his profession.Other than that, we learn very little about him. He is 55, apparently single, and nearing retirement: if he has any connections or interests outside of teaching, Mr. Philibert declines to show them.Similarly, we meet only a few of the children's parents.

There is only one home visit, a scene of math homework at the kitchen table, during which the parents of one of Mr. Lopez's older students show themselves to be confused by the assignment and devoted to the smack-in-the-head theory of pedagogy.Mr. Lopez's own methods are less punitive but strict. In France education remains rooted in tradition. The school day in St.- Etienne-Sur-Usson is full of drills, formal exercises, and dictations, that staple of French education in which a teacher recites a passage from literature and the students dutifully copy it down.

The interest of ''To Be and to Have,'' though, is not sociological: it is not really about the French educational system, rural life, or even the way children learn.It is, rather, the portrait of an artist, a man whose work combines discipline and inspiration and unfolds mysteriously and imperceptibly. The film is also a meditation on the enigma of young lives and young minds.