2023-05-05 16:12:56
Mathematics, which is what makes them so hated by at least some students, is a fairly unforgiving subject. Because it does not operate with suspicion, not with conjecture, no vagueness allowed and no evasions. Because it assumes that the world can be predicted and proof of this predictability is required, which in turn requires derivation. In that sense, it wouldn’t be hard to hate The Staff Room. It is a decidedly mathematical film.
With the contradiction between proof and assertion, with the need for a logical derivation for a proof, Carla Nowak explains to her students in the very first lesson through which we are allowed to accompany them in İlker Çatak’s film “The Teacher’s Room”.
Carla Nowak is 29. She has been attending the Emmy-Noether-Gymnasium for six months (Emmy Noether was a fabulous mathematician who, against all resistance and following her inner compass, graduated from high school in Bavaria at the beginning of the 20th century and in the twenties founded a sort of cadre factory for fabulous young mathematicians in Göttingen).
However, when calculating a formula that clearly overwhelms Carla Nowak’s class, a blur remains. It will not be dissolved. The suspicion that the “teacher’s room” is about exactly that, about the precisely calculated letting an inner compass and a supposedly rational, fair system go crazy, about a story about the impossible predictability of the world, that one could already have when it all began.
The last time German cinema visited a school, Mr. Bachmann, the old rocker, with his colorful knitted hat, was sitting in his seventh grade in Stadtallendorf in Hesse, in which the origins crossed. Maria Speth’s documentary film lasted three hours. She received the Silver Bear at the Berlinale two years ago. It was the epic, extremely quiet story of how a community can thrive and how pedagogical idealism and inner compass and humanity can contribute to it.
“The Teacher’s Room” – shown at this year’s Berlinale, nominated for seven of the German Film Awards – is the exact opposite of Speth’s film, which loves success and doesn’t downplay anything. Carla Nowak, with whom we are constantly on the move from the first murmur that comes from the dark screen, whom we accompany everywhere, is on the run from the start.
Model student and tragic character: Oskar, played by the great Leonard Stettnisch
Source: Alamode Film
You can hear that. Marvin Miller’s pizzicato score makes this unmistakable, lets the feverish, the breaking sound again and again, once you hear an orchestra tune in, it only comes together at the very end. And Carla Nowak is also locked up. In a crime story (which is also a very mathematical genre) and in Judith Kaufmann’s pictures. They play brilliantly with suites of rooms, perspectives, blurring, reflect almost overly precise faces and what is happening in them. But they are packed in the strict 4:3 box format, which actually leaves no room for excuses.
The crime story goes like this: The Emmy-Noether, which has committed itself to a zero-tolerance policy, is being stolen. It’s been like this for a long time. Zero tolerance is the first principle that İlker Çatak and Johannes Duncker, his co-screenwriter and former classmate, bring to the classroom table as proof of the Mefistofelian nature of the entire school system.
It is a principle that wills only good and always creates evil. And for the first time (the film isn’t even five minutes old) you can see in Leonie Benesch’s endlessly eloquent face, that look that always has a moment of fright in it, how everything in Carla Nowak is gradually collapsing that she was at some point actually made me take this hell of a job.
You are sitting there with the class representatives from Carla’s class – Thomas Liebenwerda, the actually cool colleague with the arch-German name and obviously African roots, the headmistress Dr. Boehm and Carla Nowak. The nerves are raw. The children are openly asked to denounce their classmates. The questions are suggestive, something like racial profiling takes place. Nothing more comes out of it than a vague suspicion, not even an assertion, no proof. The carefully constructed machinery of a system demolition begins to run. Carla can’t believe it.
Incidentally, the Emmy-Noether is not a problem school. The proportion of migrants is average. Apparently he doesn’t cause problems. What you can see of the building is in great order and neatly maintained. There is no need for a parent brigade to paint walls here. Here, middle-class children learn for a middle-class life. And yet the well-intentioned goes wrong.
It is told – that’s an ingenious trick – not only from the vicinity of Carla Nowak, but also exclusively from the inside of the Emmy-Noether. There is no outside world. Everything that happens has its cause, its origin in the system. And with the extremely painful first interrogation, we are at the lower end of the escalation scale of İlker Çatak and Johannes Duncker, which is open to the sky. Everyone believes in the right and as a fighter for justice. Everyone goes against everyone. Everything is in order, everyone is under pressure, without pressure there isn’t even coffee in the staff room.
The school as a social laboratory
And right in the middle is Carla Nowak, who has to learn that the finest moral compass is of no use if you are surrounded by magnetic poles of roughly the same strength. Then the needle starts spinning, and then, foreseeably, you do it yourself. That’s how it is in teaching. That’s the way it is everywhere today. The story of Carla Nowak is not just because school has always been a social laboratory, a story that goes far beyond the school grounds.
There are no shots at the end, “The Teacher’s Room” is not a disaster film. It’s not going to be all right. A blur remains at the end of İlker Çatak’s calculation. Then Judith Kaufmann’s camera sweeps through the empty school building. The orchestra plays Mendelssohn’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. That’s very bright. Very optimistic. And it’s just the overture. Let’s take that as a good sign.
#İlker #Çataks #Teachers #Room #school #dilemma #screams