The Teachers' Lounge: An unsettling real-world parable

The Teachers' Lounge (2023) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for occasional profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.9.24

As director Ilker Çatak’s thoughtful drama reaffirms, the road to hell continues to be paved with good intentions.

 

Carla (Leonie Benesch) knows that Oskar (Leo Stettnisch) is one of her brightest students,
but he's also withdrawn; she wonders how best to reach and engage him.

Çatak and co-scripter Johannes Duncker intend their story’s middle school setting to be a microcosm of the outside world, with respect to defensiveness, unintentionally bruised feelings, political maneuvering, failure to communicate and outright lying.

At first blush, though, things seem reasonably comfortable.

 

The location is deliberately vague and ambiguous; this could be any school, in any city. Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch) nurtures a positive, respectful and productive atmosphere in her seventh-grade classroom. Her students like her, but she doesn’t get similar “warm cozies” from much of the staff; Carla is new to the school, and many of the veteran teachers have long-established cliques in their lounge, between classes.

 

As the story begins, teachers have become concerned about an ongoing series of thefts: money and property, stolen from students and adults. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, suspicion falls on somebody in Carla’s class. A meeting is set up by senior teachers Thomas Liebenwerda (Michael Klammer) and Milosz Dudek (Rafael Stachowiak); Carla’s unease rises as they become increasingly insistent with seventh-grade class representatives Jenny (Antonia Küpper) and Lucas (Oscar Zickur).

 

Carla is dismayed when Thomas finally manipulates an answer from the children ... but, given her newcomer status, she doesn’t feel comfortable enough to voice her concerns.

 

The following day’s classroom activities are highlighted by one of Carla’s brightest students, Oskar (Leo Stettnisch), who solves a complex math problem involving limits.

 

(Pre-calculus, in seventh grade? American kids better watch out, or they’ll be eaten for lunch.)

 

The happy moment is interrupted by the arrival of the principal, Dr. Bettina Böhm (Anne-Kathrin Gummich), along with Liebenwerda and Dudek. What follows is inappropriately heavy-handed; the outcome reveals that one student, Ali Yilmaz (Can Rodenbostel), has an “unacceptably large” amount of money in his wallet.

 

That’s the worst sort of circumstantial “evidence,” and easily swatted aside by Ali’s parents, when they show up. They indignantly suggest that racism was behind their son’s being accused: an allegation that neither Böhm, Dudek or Liebenwerda can refute.

 

Böhm lamely justifies the “process” as being required by the school’s “zero-tolerance policy” (a contemptible blanket excuse that continues to be responsible for all manner of real-world harassment, unjust accusation and punishment).

 

The Zone of Interest: Horrifying, but flawed

The Zone of Interest (2023) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and disturbing content

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Given the alarming rise of antisemitism and Holocaust denial during the past several years, this film’s arrival couldn’t be more timely. Academy voters obviously thought so, and granted it five Oscar nominations.

 

Rudolf (Christian Friedel, standing far left, dressed in white) and his family invite friends
for an afternoon romp in his wife's carefully nurtured garden, all of them oblivious to
what takes place on the other side of the barbed-wire-topped wall at one edge
of their property.

Director/scripter Jonathan Glazer’s extremely loose adaptation of Martin Amis’ 2014 novel is undoubtedly one of the most chilling and memorably haunting movies ever made: an unusual Holocaust story which — like long-ago radio dramas — derives its power from what it makes us imagine.

Amis based his novel’s cold-blooded villain, Paul Doll, on Auschwitz concentration camp commandant Rudolf Höss; Glazer boldly draws directly from history in his depiction of the actual Rudolf (Christian Friedel), his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), their five boisterous children, and the bucolic setting in which they live.

 

“Bucolic,” only by force of disregard.

 

The year is 1943. Glazer opens his film on a charming pastoral scene, as Rudolf and his family are joined by friends for a riverbank picnic. (Actually, this isn’t how the film begins, but I’ll get back to that.) 

 

Everybody returns home after an enjoyable day of sun, splashing in the water, and convivial conversation. Rudolf and his family live in a charming multi-story villa, their every need tended by quietly obedient young women. Hedwig delights in the Edenic garden she has nurtured behind their home, with the assistance of numerous workmen.

 

Glazer stages these outdoor scenes against the tall, barbed-wire-topped concrete wall that runs the length of their property: the most grisly theater backdrop ever imagined, with unspeakable horrors taking place behind this stage’s metaphorical closed curtain. 

 

(The 40-square-kilometer area immediately surrounding the Auschwitz concentration camp was designated by the Nazi SS as interessengebiet: the “zone of interest.” Höss and his family did indeed live therein, alongside the camp.)

 

Glazer calmly, clinically — relentlessly — depicts the banality of the day-by-day Höss family life. Hedwig shows flowers and buzzing bees to their infant daughter. Younger son Hans (Luis Noah Witte) plays with toy soldiers and occasionally beats a toy drum; his sisters Heidetraut (Lilli Falk) and Inge-Brigitt (Nele Ahrensmeier) cavort in the small swimming pool their father built, complete with wooden slide.

 

We can’t call their behavior denial; that’s too easy. It’s actually indifference. While evil comes in many forms, casualevil arguably is the worst.

I'm Your Man: Absorbing parable on the nature of humanity

I'm Your Man (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for sexual candor and profanity

Available via: Hulu and other streaming services

By Derrick Bang

I love intelligent, quietly thoughtful sci-fi films: an increasingly rare commodity in this era of Star Wars, Star Trek and all manner of superhero movies.

 

Although ostensibly a genre devoted to science and speculative advancement, the best examples focus on how futuristic technology impacts the human condition.

 

Anna (Maren Eggert) isn't wild about introducing Tom (Dan Stevens) to her museum
research team ... but she prefers this to leaving him alone in her apartment.

2009’s Moon comes to mind, as does 2014’s Ex Machina.

Director Maria Schrader’s Ich bin dein Mensch — released here in the States as I’m Your Man — belongs in their company. This disarmingly beguiling little drama is one of 15 films short-listed for this year’s International Feature Film Oscar. And deservedly so.

 

The script — by Schrader and Jan Schomburg, based on a short story by Emma Braslavsky — is by turns ingenious, whimsical, poignant and remarkably insightful. All concerned have concocted a cheeky modern riff on the ancient Greek Pygmalion legend; the result is equal parts rom-com and shrewd philosophical musings on the nature of humanity.

 

The setting feels like modern-day Germany — in terms of clothing, cars and personal tech — but clearly is a bit in the future, given the story’s focus. We meet Alma Felser (Maren Eggert) as she nervously joins the crowd at what appears to be a posh speed-dating nightclub. She’s greeted by a “handler,” (Sandra Hüller), who in turn introduces her to Tom (Dan Stevens), apparently her companion for the evening.

 

It’s a shame to telegraph all the little ways in which this initial encounter goes oddly awry; not knowing the reason robs viewers of the delight to be experienced by Stevens’ impeccably nuanced and oddly balletic performance. Suffice to say that Tom tries much too hard to be gallant and charming, his fervent declarations of love and devotion far better suited to couples married for a decade or two, than a first “date” … if, indeed, that’s what this is.

 

But it isn’t. At least, not exactly.

 

Alma, in turn, clearly isn’t happy, doesn’t want to be here, behaves like a trapped rabbit. Eggert radiates wariness and discomfort, her guarded expression revealing a bit of condescension, if not outright contempt.

 

All becomes clear when Tom is revealed to be a meticulously crafted AI: human in appearance and — theoretically — behavior, down to the last detail. (Rest assured, matters eventually do get down to the last detail.) Alma is an archaeological research scientist at Berlin’s Pergamon Museum, specializing in deciphering ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform writing; she’s also one of 10 “experts” selected to evaluate the newest line of robots made by a never-specified corporation.

 

Her boss, Dekan (Falilou Seck), is part of an ethics committee that will determine the degree to which these … beings … are entitled to some (any?) of the protective rights that society grants its human members. Dekan has dangled a plum trip to Chicago — where Alma will be able to examine some key cuneiform tablets in person — as a means of securing her participation in this three-week trial.

 

To that end, and following Alma’s exhaustive earlier battery of tests and psychological evaluations, Tom has been designed as her “ideal man.” He’s to live with her for three weeks, after which she’ll render a final evaluation.

 

And, so, she brings him home. Very reluctantly.