To Be and to Have

To Be and to Have

&Ecirctre et Avoir has been well received in the UK, but it leaves too many questions unanswered to be fully satisfactory. In his quest to produce a charming film, director Philibert risks sentimentalism - a Gervase Phinn-like patina of nostalgia which no practising teacher will swallow. Some questions: It is hinted that M.Lopez will lose both job and home in the near future. Who decided that: he or his Education Department? And who controlled M.Lopez and his school - decided what methods and resources he would use? Why were we shown so few of these: French teaching in France must amount to more than repeated dict&eacutees? Was this a special school? All the pupils the film highlighted seemed to have moderate to severe educational problems: were there no bright, intelligent children in that village? Philibert seems to have left out far too much, and settled for (occasionally repeated) scenes of slow, gentle (and not especially inspiring) pedagogy. Yet there was a startling moment where M.Lopez, advocate of peaceful solutions to pupil quarrels, suggested to his leavers that they "get stuck in" if they are challenged at secondary school! So what was the point? Little children say and do sweet things? Some teachers are amazingly dedicated and patient? Places like this still exist in the backwaters of France? That third question begins to show up the weakness of the film: it settles for sentiment and shies away from a point of view. Low marks, M.Philibert - I'd say around quatre, virgule, sur dix.

So this is a dedicated teacher according to some reviews here. Makes me wonder what an undedicated teacher is like. If this bad school is what's good, I do not even dare to think what a bad school is like. From what I can see, it's the same old indoctrination going on here as I remember from my school-days. Not a word about the abomination of rich and poor that I hoped that I had learned something about when I went to school. No, no the same abuse of learning to accept injustice is going on here and there's nothing good about that. Just the same old brain-wash going on, in other words. I'd like to see the movie in which the teacher gets in trouble for telling the truth about our abomination of a society. This ain't it.

It's all been done before and looks so easy. Just get a group of cute little kids and a sympathetic adult prompter. Turn a hidden camera on them. Result - a sure-fire winner. And yet one is left with a nagging question - can it have been that easy when the result is something as impressive and beautifully formed as Nicolas Philibert's moving study of a village school in the Auvergne from winter through to summer? It opens with a stunning shot of cattle stoically moving about in a snow storm and continues with the progress of a school minibus as it collects young children from farms and hamlets to take them along snowy tracks to the warm security of a stone schoolhouse and their kindly and sympathetic village schoolmaster. He works alone, dividing his attention between children from four to eleven years of age and somehow succeeds miraculously in catering for their wide variety of needs. Shortly after their arrival I found a few doubts beginning to creep in on a first showing. Some of the interaction between master and pupils seemed to go on for an inordinate amount of time. When cinema adopts the role of recording the minutiae of the everyday without the discipline of the cutting scissors, as happens here when the very young children in turn write the word "Maman" and there is an inquest on each, does it not become a little like watching paint dry? And yet - if ever a film deserves patience in overcoming its initial longeurs, this is it. What these opening sequences achieve is to help us know these children as individuals and to become better acquainted with the schoolmaster as he gradually emerges as an almost saintly figure in the way he handles the problems of his charges, the two boys who fight, the girl about to go to secondary school who cannot relate to others, the boy who suddenly breaks down when he speaks of his father's illness and the tiny newcomer who cries for his mother. Such very special moments transcend what could have been an otherwise rather mundane experience; these and the sheer beauty with which the director and his cameraman record the passing of the seasons. The film concludes with the children saying goodbye to their teacher as they leave for their summer holiday. At this point I felt enriched by this brief insight into their lives. My tears were of gratitude for an experience that had touched me in so special a way.

I found this film simply irritating. I can't think why it should be "required viewing" like some reviewers claim. Maybe for those who are into teaching, who absolutely LOVE kids and for those who do rural sociology (I must be forgetting some other trade). But for most of us, it only shows how difficult it must be to teach VERY young kids. And how vital that role is. As Kim Anehall puts so well in Amazon: "To Be and to Have offers some true insights on the job as teachers should be regarded as everyday heroes in the last line of defense in a developing society". I think that the director Philibert never "scrapes below the surface" of the teaching process itself, leaving us instead with plain empiria. And the "lessons" seems staked, like if Mr. Lopez would like to prove how good he is at teaching, and as a person. But, as a reviewer notes, the camera shows very clearly when the kids have learnt their lesson, and when they don't (which is most of the times). The stark contrast of the "conditons of life" in France compared to any underdeveloped country is painful. The teacher drives a big Audi (!), the schools themselves are nice and lofty, and they all have all the necessary equipment. The kind of things people take for granted on the developed world. I'd love to have this system back in my country, Argentina. Specifically, in the "conurbano bonaerense", where teachers aren't paid for months, pupils go to school basically to have a meal their parents can't afford back home, and violence is the rule of the game. I laughed with one American reviewer when he said that probably JoJo would be medicated in the US... If you want to know about different methods of education you could always watch for instance Kiarostami's "Where Is the Friend's Home?" to learn how the other half of the world lives. The cinematography is very nice. I agree with another Amazon reviewer Matt Curtin (Columbus, OH USA) on the Lopez'saga of suits: "That he would later claim that he was due some additional compensation that was never part of the deal reminds me of his interaction with young JoJo (...) even our greatest teachers are still ultimately human, complete with their own weaknesses. Perhaps the final lesson is that even disappointment is a part of life". Same goes for the great Manohla Dargis on the LA Times: "Apparently, the French are not so very different, after all".

Etre et Avoir claims to be a genteel portrait of children in rural France enjoying the fruits of a simple way of life. A way of life that, like their youth, is on verge of extinction. In truth it is more than that; it is a film with a mission. Shot in an apparently unobtrusive observational style, the film appears to show how life how it is. However, in reality it relies on the cuteness of the children to paint a picture of a fictional, highly idealised world. We are bombarded with images of happy, oh so innocent youngsters thriving under the watchful eye of their wise old teacher and protector. We identify with the children and bring in our own worldly wise perspectives. Nostalgia (an emotion so very close to sadness) quickly engulfs us. This gushing sentimentalism - reinforced by the title To Be and To Have - is genuinely moving and very powerful. Yet in truth, it is film made by cynics, who stage events to support their ideals. A family gathers round the dining room table to help a child with her maths, as if this is their way. Outside of the film, we learn that they never do this and this is a household where the television is always on. For the purpose of the film, of course, they appear to have no television! (We should always be prepared to test a text in this way; why should we take any artist at their word?) This is not the inadvertent bias or fiction of a documentary maker whose own value system is so deeply ingrained they cannot keep it of their work. This is a carefully and deliberately crafted fiction. The ideals that the filmmaker is so desperate to force upon us are ultra-traditionalist and ultra-conservative. This world abhors progress and harks back to a golden age that never was. It is reasonable to presume that lurking under the surface of Etre et Avoir is every bias and prejudice rightly associated with such thinking.

Named as one of the best films of 2002 in the Film Comment poll of 59 international film critics, To Be and To Have provides an insight into the learning process of thirteen children, ages 4 to 10, in a one-room schoolhouse during a seven-month period. The film is a tribute to the innocence of childhood and to the dedication of their teacher, 55-year old George Lopez. Director Nicolas Philibert selected Lopez' rural schoolhouse in the Auvergne region of southeast France from a list of 300 schools. As Philibert explained: "I wanted a school with a limited number of pupils so that each child would be easily identifiable and become a character in the film. I also wanted the fullest age range possible -- from kindergarten to the final year of primary school -- to show the atmosphere and charm of these small, eclectic communities and the very specific work required from the teachers." Filming almost 600 hours of the children's daily activities with a crew of four, Philibert allows us to re-experience the long forgotten frustrations of learning how to trace letters, express our feelings verbally, count until we run out of numbers, and get along with our classmates. Mr. Lopez has taught in the same school for twenty year and has a unique ability to simply be with and respect children for who they are and what they say. He is a model of patience and an example of how to listen without making moral judgments or instant evaluations. He says of the teaching profession, "It takes time and personal involvement and the children return that again and again." Most of the children come from families who are not well educated but the film shows the parents struggling to do their best to solve the mysteries of their child's homework. To Be and To Have is also filled with humor as in a sequence when two very young students are fighting a losing battle with a photocopier and when a student insists on using the word "pal" instead of "friend". Much time is spent observing a pre-schooler named Jojo with a very typical attention span. He is endearing but I would have liked a bit more exploration of Katherine who we find out at the end has a serious problem in communicating. Mr. Lopez works closely with each child, showing sensitivity in the way he handles problems as when he asks two fighting students to imagine the effect their behavior has on others. Time and again he mediates disputes by helping children to communicate with each other as in the scene where he assists two older boys, Julien and Olivier, in understanding the reasons they got into a fight. "You were just testing each other, but then it degenerated, no?" he asks. The film begins in December with footage of snow falling on a herd of cows and continues until the following Summer. By the end we have come to know many of the students. When the teacher announces he is going to retire in another year, the emotion on his face when the children plant kisses on his cheek as they say goodbye for their vacation was felt throughout the entire audience of 800 people. To Be and To Have celebrates the dedication of teachers whose unacknowledged labors make a profound difference in the lives of our children. A film of warmth and humanity, it is the highest grossing French documentary of all time. Job well done, Mr. Lopez and Mr. Phlibert.

Having heard good comments throughout my family, I was very eager to enjoy this documentary... No stunts? That's fine with me... No plot? Of course, this is a documentary, but the problem is... at the end, there was nothing left.... so little is going on, that this classroom is boring and apart from one or 2 smiles the cute children will bring to you, you don't care a cracked iron copper about what happens... Mr. Lopez claiming a lot of money after the success of the movie (even though he had no legal claim to it) did surprise me a bit... maybe the kids will ask for some when they grow up too... Very disappointing 4/10...

In a small rural school, children ranging from ages 4 up to 11 are taught by teacher Georges Lopez. We see how he approaches each class as different but yet manages to engage the children, relating to them and making them trust him as a friend while still remaining an authority figure within the classroom. For about 7 years, I helped out in a crèche looking after 2-4 year olds and it was a weekly job that I very much enjoyed because, while I had to keep control of the class I also enjoyed the friendship of the kids, found them interesting and funny and was able to keep this part of the class dynamic – much like Lopez does here (albeit he has more structure to deliver than I did). For that reason I was mostly interested in the documentary but very quickly I found myself wondering why such a film had been made – what about this was important enough to be worthy of documenting for the ages. I can see in principle that the example of this wonderfully personable teacher and his relationship with his students would be worth showing around to show what teaching and schools can be like but really this is a simple example and it is too easy to dismiss it as being perhaps true of some rural schools and not of the vast majority of schools in any country. I can see why it was popular though; the "nice" atmosphere and concept of this type of teaching must be like a wet dream to many, but it doesn't often exist and by documenting it the film never has a chance to comment on anything – instead it just shows how nice everything is. Although this is good to watch and inspiring in a way, I would have preferred it if it had been contrasted with an urban school; although that smacks a bit of reality television I couldn't help but wonder how the film could have been more interesting and relevant. As it is, the kids are cute, funny and engaging, Lopez is patient and affable and the classroom setting shows what can be done in a relaxed room, a small amount of pupils and no major problem children. Sadly none of this is interesting for that long and I didn't really see the reason for it doing as well as it had back in 2002. Overall, this is nice and slightly inspiring but even then it is too easy to look at Lopez's situation and think that life would be like that if all schools were given the same circumstances. However, documentaries work best when informative, challenging and interesting – and really this film was none of those to any great extent even if it was "nice" and perhaps of interest to those who like kids.

I fully expected to love the film. I'm an elementary school teacher and always enjoy films about teachers working with children. To be honest, I thought the film was dull. We don't really get to know the children or the teacher very well. There seems to be very little taught in the school. The students are constantly writing out dictations and the teacher, who is a very nice man and very kind to his students, is seen having the same type of interactions with his students over and over. After a while I became frustrated that we weren't really getting to know anyone in any depth...yes, the teacher says kind and gentle things, but it's like watching the same scene over and over. Even the antics of the kids are cute, but dull...in a year of filming these are the most interesting moments the director came up with? Still, a relaxing and sweet film.