The Teachers' Lounge
The Teachers' Lounge
When one of her students is suspected of theft, teacher Carla Nowak decides to get to the bottom of the matter. Caught between her ideals and the school system, the consequences of her actions threaten to break her.
rg9400 reviewedNovember 1, 2024
I really wanted to like this movie more than I did. Centered around the perspective of a new teacher in a German school, it follows her as tensions rise and an atmosphere founded on suspicion starts to boil over. As another comment rightfully notes, there are strong parallels to Vinterberg's The Hunt. However, I had a few problems with this movie. For one, I found the reactions of various characters to be very hard to believe. The way the administrative staff in the school lets things escalate, or the way the children react to certain events, never felt naturalistic or realistic. To be honest, it was not helped by some of the acting, with the exception of Leonie Benesch as the teacher. However, even after I accepted the events as they were unfolding, I felt like the movie never managed to come together in a cohesive whole in regards to its central conflict between ideals and school bureaucracy. The movie is naturally coy with its central mystery, yet also presents us with what seems like fairly compelling evidence in regards to what actually happened. Still, it seems to want to vilify people for believing in that evidence or acting upon it while also trying to illustrate what happens when the unknown is allowed to fester in the whole school's collective consciousness. We see the way the teacher reacts to a variety of different behaviors from children, but I was left confused by the message -- whether these were supposed to be considered examples of ideal teaching or mistakes made, mostly because they occur in a vacuum and do not actually influence the central conflict that emerges. And as the movie reaches a crescendo and barrels toward its conclusion, I was left confused both by the messaging which seems to struggle to be clear and confident, as well as the emotional connection because I ended up feeling like everyone was in the wrong. And as the ending sequence played out, it became clear that the movie believed it had earned some sort of triumphant resolution instead of the ambiguous and unsure mixed messaging that I think it ended up actually delivering.