The Kindergarten Teacher movie review (2019) | Little White Lies

The Kinder­garten Teacher

06 Mar 2019 / Released: 08 Mar 2019

A woman in a classroom interacting with a young boy.
A woman in a classroom interacting with a young boy.
3

Anticipation.

Not exactly hyped for a Netflix ‘original’ remake of an acclaimed Israeli film.

4

Enjoyment.

Cinema as pure and poetic as youthful innocence.

4

In Retrospect.

A piece of apposite cultural criticism with a stunning turn from Gyllenhaal.

Mag­gie Gyl­len­haal is com­pelling in this rich char­ac­ter study about a men­tor and her protégé.

Tal­ent is so frag­ile and rare, and our cul­ture does every­thing to crush it.” So says Mag­gie Gyl­len­haal in Sara Colangelo’s The Kinder­garten Teacher, a sen­ti­ment that per­fect­ly cap­tures the essence of the film. What appears on the sur­face to be a slow-burn thriller even­tu­al­ly asks tren­chant ques­tions about the nature of parental respon­si­bil­i­ty, and the extent to which guardians have a duty to a child’s tal­ent over their own wellbeing.

It makes for remark­ably potent view­ing. Gyl­len­haal plays teacher Lisa Spinel­li with a qui­et mas­tery that con­firms her as a com­pelling lead. Her per­for­mance is unlike any­thing we’ve seen from her before, as she takes a boy called Jim­my (Park­er Sevak) under her wing after hear­ing him recite poet­ry. The pure­ness of this lit­tle muse instils with­in her a dev­as­tat­ing dis­ap­point­ment in her own decid­ed­ly non-aca­d­e­m­ic chil­dren. Her feel­ings come from per­son­al fail­ure, of not being born with artis­tic abil­i­ty, and so she grasps the oppor­tu­ni­ty to live her life vic­ar­i­ous­ly through a child prodigy.

There is a scene in which Lisa sits down with her daugh­ter and asks why she gave up pho­tog­ra­phy. The teenag­er despairs at the smell of a dark room, cit­ing instead her Insta­gram pro­file to demon­strate her suc­cess with a cam­era. Lisa can­not relate to some­thing so intan­gi­ble, requir­ing the expe­ri­ence of pro­duc­tion and recep­tion – reflect­ed in the fact that she writes her deriv­a­tive poems with a ball­point pen in a tat­tered note­book. Her lack of cre­ativ­i­ty is vis­i­bly frus­trat­ing, and it is why we empathise even when her obses­sion devel­ops beyond reason.

Colan­ge­lo invites us to sup­port Lisa in her futile effort to save cul­ture. This could be an iron­ic mes­sage, giv­en that this is an Eng­lish-lan­guage remake of Israeli direc­tor Nadav Lapid’s 2014 film, an exer­cise typ­i­cal­ly frowned upon by lovers of high-brow’ for­eign cin­e­ma. Such crit­i­cism would sub­scribe to the very snob­bery which The Kinder­garten Teacher seeks to reject. The film has been made for an anglo­phone audi­ence with an estab­lished female lead, so that Colan­ge­lo can make acces­si­ble the beau­ty of poet­ry. Unlike Lisa’s mis­guid­ed efforts, which descend from smoth­er­ing to kid­nap­ping, the film itself shines as a nuanced ode to art.

Per­haps we are nev­er dri­ven to indig­na­tion at Lisa’s actions because the film exudes a refresh­ing state of calm, boast­ing a visu­al style that is awash with turquoise hues. This aes­thet­ic has the dual effect of cre­at­ing an icy cold­ness, a world devoid of poetry’s joie de vivre. These plea­sures comes to Lisa in the form of her instructor’s pas­sion, an unusu­al­ly restrained Gael García Bernal, and more impor­tant­ly from Jimmy’s enchant­i­ng monologues.

At the cli­max, Colan­ge­lo asks us to decide how much pres­sure can be placed on an indi­vid­ual to bring out their nest work. There are sim­i­lar­i­ties to Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, although The Kinder­garten Teacher ben­e­fits from a sub­tler form of expres­sion. Both films end on an assertive­ly ambigu­ous note, ask­ing whether any form of art is worth sav­ing via poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous meth­ods. To reflect, I have a poem: Anthem of lost youth / Search­ing for the poet’s soul / Slips out of my grasp.

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