"The death of a man is more the business of the survivors than his" Thomas Mann.
For his first feature film released in 2015, the Slovak director, Rock Bicek decided to tell an event that happened in his high school.
A new German teacher arrives in a classroom. Very different from the previous teacher, colder and more austere, he quickly puts the students at risk. Tension rises when a young girl in the class, Sabina, commits suicide without leaving an explanation. Students are convinced that their teacher is responsible. Very quickly, the establishment is overwhelmed by the magnitude of this revolt.
The film takes place behind closed doors in a high school. Establishment in which students and teachers evolve: opposite hierarchies. All exteriors are overexposed white. We are locked in the school without any view of the outside. In a grey/blue, cold atmosphere, students and teachers are not often put in the same frame. It's always very tight on one side or the other, from one clan to another. And it works! You feel the tension and opposition from the beginning. No possible mixing, no possible agreement, it is a dialogue of the deaf.
Throughout the film, the spectator changes sides, suddenly on the side of the students, suddenly on the side of the teacher, the teacher.The film offers an interesting and very well balanced pace. Questions of politics, mourning, rebellion, youth are the pillars of history.
From sadness to hatred, the students' revenge is increasingly violent. At first, they only light a row of candles in the hallway, then the tension rises, with a radio show that accuses the teacher of having pushed the girl to suicide and of being a Nazi: the goal is humiliation. And finally, the masks with the effigy of the girl that students wear in class.
We finally recognize two categories of students, those who knew and loved Sabina and those who were looking for an excuse to take revenge for all the pressure they are subjected to in the school.
All this to change the system. In fact, what these young people were waiting for was the spark that would ignite their anger. They are no longer fighting to do justice to their classmate, but to make the entire school system pay and prove its dysfunction.
Finally, it is Mojca, Sabina's best friend who ends up explaining in a beautiful essay paying tribute to her friend, that during a suicide there is not necessarily a responsible.Nothing is black or white.
Slovenia is one of the countries occupied by the Germans during the Second World War. At many times the most radical students insult their German teacher as a Nazi, without really knowing the definition of this word and its gravity. Even today, this kind of talk in schools is commonplace. Like Dennis Gansel's The Wave, the film should be shown in high schools, it is an educational film.
Rock Bicek has surrounded himself with very fair actors, both students and teachers. He tells us a story full of tension and emotion. Little known in France, nevertheless rewarded at the Festival Premiers Plans d'Angers, it deserves to be seen on a larger scale.
