Film
Seitz, Michael H.
Michael H. Seitz School Daze The crisis in American education, big news in the media, is good news to Hollywood filmmaker Arthur Hiller. His Teachers, which looks at the contemporary urban high...
...Unfortunately, this motley dish never jells, and it stands as just one more film on the making of a film...
...But these issues are so obscured by the movie's reliance on hack themes that the educational crisis, in the end, looks like a pretext for marketing an entertainment package—replete with trendy rock 'n' roll score and original soundtrack album, now available at your local record store...
...His Teachers, which looks at the contemporary urban high school, cannot help but cash in on the brouhaha over instructional standards...
...The film's departures from the historical fact may infuriate some, but I am not especially bothered by the dramatic devices...
...underfunding of programs and inadequate pay for teachers, and lack of accountability in the system...
...In the midst of all this comes a plot: The school is sued for graduating an illiterate, and the good "teach" (Nick Nolte) falls in love with his most responsive, grateful, and delectable former student (Jobeth Williams...
...But the film spins its narrative at a fast pace and makes stunning use of period locations in Prague—interiors as well as exteriors...
...All problems are suddenly resolved and credibility is strained beyond repair...
...Viewers who pay close attention may also see that Teachers touches on some of the problems plaguing our schools: abdication of responsibility by administrators, teachers, and parents...
...The filmmaker was in Poland during the 1980 Gdansk shipyard strike, came back to this country to raise money for a film about Solidarity, and then found her return to Poland blocked by that government...
...Unions come in for a drubbing, too...
...The principal whimpers, the school psychologist breaks down (after the mimeograph machine fails), a teacher is bitten, police fatally shoot a student, and a certifiable mental patient, accidentally hired to teach history, becomes the most effective instructor in the place...
...McKinney, as well as to Hiller...
...There are, however, aspects of Amadeus that do grate: a Mozart and Constanza who speak in stridently American accents, the unmistakably Twyla Tharpish choreography in a period production ofAbduction from the Seraglio, and a disconcerting mixture of high drama and burlesque...
...The final twenty minutes of Teachers are calamitous—not for the fictional school but for the film itself...
...The whole school crisis ultimately comes down to the observation that "no one cares...
...She decided to fabricate the intended documentary, stitching together dramatized scenes and interviews, television news broadcasts, footage commissioned from Solidarity filmmakers, fantasized phone conversations with Fidel Castro, and an epilogue made up of mock out-takes from an imagined 1988 film of Andrzej Wajda...
...print with Dolby sound...
...bureaucratization and its attendant squabbles...
...To spice things up, an award-winning teacher dies in class, but his expiration is not noticed for several periods...
...Credit for the preposterous conclusion should probably go to the young, first-time scriptwriter, W.R...
...U Hits and Misses Amadeus Sumptuous, occasionally dazzling motion picture version of the Peter Shaffer play, scripted by Shaffer and directed by Milos Forman...
...Murphy's Law governs the high school...
...Chips and The Blackboard Jungle...
...Teachers ends up as an institutional disaster film, much like The Hospital, which Hiller also directed...
...It contains imaginatively staged excerpts from Mozart operas, and, above all, is packed with some of the most glorious music ever written...
...Teachers ends happily—as market researchers say a film should—and it may make money, but it doesn't make the grade in my book...
...For the full impact, try to see a screening of the 70-mm...
...The lawsuit is settled out of court, the teacher-hero triumphs over the union that had sold him out, and the wayward troublemaker is brought back into the educational fold...
...If the realization of a male teacher's erotic fantasy is not enough to carry the film, Teachers follows the antics of an appealing young troublemaker (Ralph Macchio, with the air of a young Sal Mineo...
...Hiller is to be applauded for giving the screen one of the few positive images of a teacher since Goodbye Mr...
...Far from Poland This quasi-documentary by an American independent, Jill Godmilow, turns out to be more interesting in its conception and theoretical implications than in its realization...
...Hiller offers a lesson in racism—the few black students seem to spend their time knifing each other—and sexist characterization...
Vol. 48 • October 1984 • No. 12
