Revue de “The Teacher”: the Palestinian educator becomes a lighthouse of dignity

During an apparently normal school day, Basem (Saleh Bakri), a dedicated educator from the West Bank with hypnotized eyes, encourages his student Yacoub (Mahmoud Bakri) to get back on the right track with his studies and “regain control of his life”. But whatever the autonomy that the young man can reaffirm seems futile in the face of the Israeli occupation which hinders any feeling of normality. Yacoub's aspirations for a future have been replaced by anger, all consuming and justified after spending two years in prison.

This contradictory and burning feeling of wishing to go ahead despite its constant recall that your existence is devalued propels the first feature film by Farah Nabulsi, “the teacher”, even if he sometimes falls through his more melodramatic aspects. Nabulsi Short film in 2020 nominated from the Oscars “The present” Chronicle the negotiation of a Palestinian father through an Israeli checkpoint dehumanizing with his young daughter. (Bakri also played the protagonist in this indictment of the size of a bite.)

In the first minutes of “the professor”, Yacoub found himself in the hands of an Israeli colonist, leaving behind his young teenager Adam (Muhammad Abed Elrahman). Yacoub's challenge seems to be transferred directly to Adam, whose world vision has been turned upside down. “The Teacher” was shot on the spot in the West Bank and the landscapes and the arid houses captured by the director of photography Gilles Porte feel faithful to Palestinian life, which makes a striking visual declaration.

Nabulsi, unfortunately, muddled the story with several sub -ints, an inelegant actor and an artificial English dialogue. There is Lisa (Imogen Pots), a worker from well -intentioned NGOs who becomes romantically involved in Basem, and the Cohens, a Jewish couple whose soldier of TDI of American origin was kidnapped in the pursuit of the release of imprisoned Palestinians. Basem is secretly part of this operation.

These complementary modules make “the teacher” without focusing on his way to a larger geopolitical image. What remains coherent through all tangents, however, is Bakri's performance as a basem, radiating solid tranquility, not the genre that comes naturally but an inner peace that he forces himself to exuder in order to save lives, his and those of young people like Adam. If he goes to the fury that undoubtedly does it through him, then his personal suffering (revealed in flashbacks) would be in vain. The heart of “the teacher” is the relationship of Basem with his pupil, a substitution child whom he must protect.

Halfway through the film, Basem and Adam share an embrace struck with sorrow after the boy threatens to injure his brother's killer. With a wide plan, Nabulsi and the editor Mike Pike cut in the desperate hands of Adam on the Basem back. The intensity with which the adolescent embraces his teacher, a paternal figure, helps a spectator to understand the depth of pain, impregnating “the teacher” with moving power.

But what can you teach someone when their daily reality is so painful? When they have to withdraw from rage when their house is demolished? What can a teacher be used for these distressing circumstances? A lot.

This feeling of helplessness that has confusing the Spirit is what the director Nabulsi aims to repel, certainly by narrative means not always effective, but with emotional sincerity. Basem's concern is not whether these boys learn a single word of English, but his presence – the daily reliability he will be there, whatever the little force they could have stayed – is an embodied resistance. Among the ruins, the most important school mission is to live despite everything.