To Be and to Have (Être et avoir)

Grade: A

When I was in nursery school, I tried to get the attention of my teacher who was busily in discussion with another teacher. She chastised me for interrupting, I immediately broke into tears, and while comforting me she explained that I should only break into a conversation in case of an emergency like a fire or something. Tears dried, I regaled her with the fire we once had in our kitchen at home, when my mother overcooked the bacon and set the curtains ablaze. All was better with the world. I haven’t thought of that story in some 30 years.

I fell in love with my first grade teacher, Miss Garfinkle, and was quite upset when I found out she was engaged and would soon become Mrs. Greene. I called her at home and yelled at her for not waiting until I was old enough to marry her, then confessed I was really calling to congratulate her. I invited her to my Bar Mitvah. She actually came. I haven’t thought of her in about 10 years. She’ll always be Miss Garfinkle to me.

When kids started picking on me in the sixth grade, my mother wrote my teacher a note, and he delivered a clandestine lecture to the boys in class about how merciless kids could be and how we needed to be nicer to one another. I haven’t thought about those kids in…well…okay – I think about them all the time, the hoodlums. I’m sure the bastards are in jail by now.

In this lovely and simple homage to those who teach, one is flooded with personal memories and reflections, is simultaneously tickled and touched by the children we once were, and is enraptured by the gentle heroism of a teacher. Working in a one-room schoolhouse, teaching multiple grade levels at once, we see a man teach his kids how to color and spell, pay attention and focus, support and sometimes judge one another, develop and mature. He arbitrates fights, comforts kids with ill parents and immobilizing shyness, lectures against laziness and poor behavior. We see families huddled around the kitchen table, working on math problems together. We see kids hating each other and becoming the best of friends. We see older kids sometimes picking on the younger, sometimes striving to set a good example and be role models. But most of all, we see a teacher teach. The fact that we never learn his first name, have only the most basic knowledge of his background and never know of his life beyond the school truly doesn’t matter. To these kids, he is teacher, parent, confidante and friend. They call him simply “Sir.”

On the last day of school and a mere year away from retirement, the emotionally distraught look on this teacher’s face after saying goodbye to his children -- some for them last time -- is simply devastating. None of these kids will ever, ever forget him.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0318202/

Lost in Translation

Grade: B+

Sophia Coppola will forever be in the hearts and minds of movie-lovers everywhere -- for giving one of the single worst performances ever on the screen. When a shot rings out in “Godfather III,” Sophia gasps out “daddy?” to Al Pacino before keeling over with a huge hole in her chest, one could almost hear the audience cheer.

Happily, she is a far better director and screenwriter.

So simple in the telling that the screenplay dissolves away into something far more like real life, Coppola has a cinematic eye that creates poetic images and captures quiet moments. Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson provide straight-forward performances that nicely embody the essence of two individuals lost someplace neither wants to be, unable to sleep, not miserable in their lives yet not quite happy, humbly playing their roles of suave movie star and obligatory tourist (how many of us have been stuck somewhere when we just wanted to be home -- via a conference, a lay-over, a family event -- seeing the sights we didn’t really want to see, trying the food we didn’t really care for, forcing ourselves to broaden our horizons rather than just hanging out in our hotel rooms watching cable television?). Not unlike the film “Insomnia,” this one has a feel that nicely captures the hazy, exhausted, slow motion feeling of jet-lagged sleeplessness, where one is just a little more vulnerable, a little more open, a little more emotionally raw.

Unfortunately, Ms. Coppola has failed to set a mood without oft creating a painfully slowly paced experience as well. While we’ve all spent agonized nights feeling minutes pass as though they were hours, here such moments would be greatly strengthened by some serious editing.Still, there is a truth here that fills the screen, as we glimpse the lives of two people caught through keyhole moments, everyday experience, with just the right dash of humor. Yet, when the film is over, the experience, like a dream, fades quickly into mist.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0335266/