Young Simon sees something no elementary school child should witness. His supposedly popular homeroom teacher hung herself in the classroom. It must be the ultimate act of passive aggression, but the film has little time for her issues. Eager to quickly move on, the school director will hire the first plausible long term substitute teacher who will accept the position, but only one person applies: recently arrived Algerian immigrant Bachir Lazhar.
A man with a secret past, Lazhar would seem to be the perfect candidate to implement the principal’s strategies of denial and coasting out the term. Yet, he cannot help forming attachments to his still grieving students, particularly Simon, who has become increasingly disruptive in class. It seems the young boy had a thorny history with his late teacher, a fact Lazhar must deduce for himself.
Monsieur Lazhar is an absolute minefield of potentially melodramatic clichés, yet Falardeau’s adaptation of Evelyne de la Chenelière’s stage play nimbly scampers over them all. It also has host of multicultural issues layered on top of it, yet it consistently resists the siren call of didacticism. Instead, Falardeau presents an intimate drama that seems so fresh because of its honesty and simplicity. Lazhar tries to help his class without calling undue attention to himself—period. Yet, the story turns out to be so much richer and more complicated than that.
Algerian stage performer and comic Fellag (as he is simply billed) clearly understands the benefits of subtlety. His sensitive but reserved approach as Lazhar allows him to really lower the emotional boom with his climatic speech to his class. It is a performance that sneaks up on the audience, winning them over with its straight forward integrity. The child actors also do surprisingly assured work, especially the three primary student characters, played by Sophie Nélisse, Émilien Néron, and Marie-Eve Beauregard.
