Mr Bach­mann and his Class

As far as the cin­e­mat­ic canon of inspi­ra­tional school teach­ers go, beanie-hat­ted paragon of chill, Deit­er Bach­mann, is right up there. This obser­va­tion­al non-fic­tion epic sees film­mak­er Maria Speth and (you would imag­ine) her tiny tech­ni­cal team embed­ded with­in a class at a junior school locat­ed in the west Ger­man indus­tri­al berg of Stad­tal­len­dorf, an area which attracts a large migrant com­mu­ni­ty, many of whom we dis­cov­er are using the spot as a way sta­tion en route to their final destination.

On a super­fi­cial lev­el, Speth’s film offers inti­mate insight into the nuances of teach­ing and the eth­i­cal bal­anc­ing act that comes with attempt­ing to imbue knowl­edge into the minds of an eth­ni­cal­ly and behav­ioural­ly diverse range of kids. The film is inter­est­ed very lit­tle in the bureau­cra­cy of teach­ing, and it nev­er appears as if Bach­mann is des­per­ate­ly attempt­ing to mould these chil­dren in the image of a mono­lith­ic nation­al cur­ricu­lum. Instead, he engages his charges in a series of wide rang­ing dis­cours­es in which the basic stric­tures of lib­er­al moral­i­ty are deliv­ered with com­ic stealth.

We are intro­duced to Bach­mann as he polite­ly demands all his chil­dren walk out of the class­room and return in silence, nev­er rais­ing his voice, but also not receiv­ing any clap-backs from the abid­ing stu­dents. Any sense that he’s a bru­tal dis­ci­pli­nar­i­an are swift­ly tossed out, as the lessons them­selves com­prise of wide-rang­ing and inclu­sive dis­cus­sions that sel­dom involve a pen and paper. In fact, rather than a black­board, Bachmann’s tool of choice is his trusty acoustic gui­tar (stay with me!), as he reg­u­lar­ly leads the class in song and then clev­er­ly empow­ers them to decon­struct the lyrics.

The film’s dura­tion – three hours and 36 mins – works very much in its favour, and it real­ly comes into its own by the third hour when we have cul­ti­vat­ed rela­tion­ships with the pro­tag­o­nists and have come to care deeply about the paths of their devel­op­ment. A sequence in which Bach­mann meets indi­vid­ual stu­dents accom­pa­nied with a par­ent to offer and update on progress is per­haps the moment where his sub­tle modus operand comes to the fore, as he is not afraid to lob­by (“fight” is too strong a word for it) for what he tru­ly believes the kids – rather than him­self – want to do in life.

Beyond doc­u­ment­ing the hard, at-the-coal­face process­es of school­ing, the film also offers a cel­e­bra­tion of Euro­pean cul­tur­al diver­si­ty and puts paid to xeno­pho­bic tabloid sen­sa­tion­al­ism about how we should fear out­siders. Bach­mann him­self seems to take great joy from both cel­e­brat­ing and chal­leng­ing the range of eth­nic­i­ties and belief sys­tems present in his class – he even for­mu­lates sim­ple meth­ods of com­mu­ni­ca­tion for those who don’t quite have a work­able han­dle on the Ger­man lan­guage. The film says to us that relax­ation, empa­thy and open­ness is more than enough to bridge any divides. He makes every­thing look very easy, and the film makes us under­stand what a laud­able human qual­i­ty that can be. 

A few behind-the-scenes moments dur­ing week­ends and hol­i­days depict a more per­son­al side to the oth­er­wise-enig­mat­ic Bach­mann, but the pic­ture that Speth paints of him is as some­one who is casu­al­ly fix­at­ed with this occu­pa­tion – that the process of teach­ing is seeped into his very being and con­sumes his thoughts. When you watch him work, it’s hard not to pon­der whether his sub­lime diplo­mat­ic skills could be put to grander use, but by then end of the film, you realise that what we’re see­ing is the per­fect sym­bio­sis between a per­son and their cho­sen métier.

The knee-jerk styl­is­tic com­par­i­son to make is to the insti­tu­tion­al pro­file films of the great Fred­er­ick Wise­man, and Speth does pho­to­graph with a sim­i­lar dis­pas­sion­ate, unob­tru­sive gaze. Yet the film will like­ly hit hard­er with fans of Nico­las Philibert’s 2002 film Être et Avoir, which cap­tures a year in the life of a one-class school in the French provinces. One images that Bach­mann and the inspi­ra­tional teacher from that film, Georges Lopez, would have a lot to talk about.