Highly Overrated But Still Good

Good start, but then it gets ruined

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

I said this was the best movie ever the day after I watched it and am still saying it a decade later (though I have not watched it lately) It is slowly but perfectly paced. The action tales place within, and at the end it serves up your hart on a silver platter... The catharsis is deep but not painful like in Pan's Labyrinth or Jacob's Ladder, this movie stole my heart without ripping it out my chest. Oh the plot and so on? Don't worry about that, you would not be watching this movie for "a plot" though will not miss it either if you seek humanity in cinema.

Sometimes a movie need not have lots of noise and colour to make it a gem. Sometimes all it needs is a compelling story, something very important to say, a very good script and magnificent actors.Monsieur Lazhar has something important to say and it says it exceptionally well. With a subtle delicacy and actors who truly understand the importance of nuance and body language and how to appear completely real, this deceptively simple story is given power and meaning that will tug at your thoughts for some time.Particularly important, the young actors here were just sensational, all of them, otherwise this would never have been able to work in the way that it did. Just a brilliant body of work from young and old. And it does it quietly, so that you barely realise.

This tightly written gem manages to pack a powerful emotional punch, while avoiding clichés and "cheap shots" - no easy task in a film that examines the emotions of 11/12-year-old schoolchildren and their teachers.The acting is for the most part charmingly low-key, and the action minimal, leaving the viewer wanting more, right up to the calmly controlled yet emotional ending (no spoilers here!). The movie also raises some interesting (and highly topical) issues about physical contact with children in the classroom or at summer camp (hugging, patting on the back, applying sunscreen, wiping a bloody nose, etc.). While one minor character expresses the popular viewpoint, the film contains several key scenes designed to let viewers make up their own minds.Highly recommended - I rarely give anything 8 out of 10!

Monsieur Lazhar follows a growing trend in Quebecois films getting more recognition at the Oscars, either nominated or making a shortlist, with Denys Arcand scoring a win. Monsieur Lazhar's nomination followed Incendies' the previous year, but I didn't think Monsieur Lazhar was as powerful as Incendies, and despite being Canadian, agree with the Academy's decision to hand the 2011 Foreign Language Oscar to Iran's A Separation instead.The premise of the movie sounds vaguely familiar- a new teacher steps into a school with students from another world, and inspires them. In this case, Lazhar is an Algerian refugee who teaches at a Quebecois school after a teacher hangs herself there, and must help the students cope. The students soon do well in spite of Lazhar's high expectations.The movie is slightly underdeveloped in explaining how Lazhar achieves his breakthrough in teaching the students, a little more puzzling considering he's not even a real teacher- his late wife in Algeria was. On that subject, I wasn't all that sympathetic to him for lying about those credentials, nor for slapping a student's head or acting insensitive about the deceased teacher from time to time (although we know very little about her, it's far likelier she was in a poor state of mental health rather than actively trying to harm the students).That said, Monsieur Lazhar is by no stretch of the imagination a bad movie, at times being spot on in its emotion. It just turns out that A Separation and Incendies brought out more powerful emotions.