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Film Description
The documentary sensation that followed a year in the life of a rural French village school in the Auvergne, its dozen children aged between 4-10, and their single teacher, Monsieur Georges Lopez. A master of quiet authority, he patiently navigates the children towards adolesence, cooling down their arguments and listening to their problems, while trying to balance the varying needs of the disparate age groups for whom he must provide.
This is filmmaking of both heart and humanity with poetry in its vision and restraint and care in its telling. Really lovely.
This 112 minute documentary would have been shown at the Academy Cinema–the highest possible accolade. What makes it stand out? It seeks to be true to the daily life a... more >
This 112 minute documentary would have been shown at the Academy Cinema–the highest possible accolade. What makes it stand out? It seeks to be true to the daily life and routine of an outstanding teacher, Georges Lopez, and his pupils in their single room rural school in the Auvergne.
The first shot is of a tortoise crawling ever so slowly across the floor of an empty classroom, soon to be followed by a second tortoise. The opening relates to the ending, where Lopez stands crestfallen and alone after taking leave of his students, many of whom he expects never to see again.
Etre et Avoir is made up of a variety of scenes, each of which unfolds gradually and in real time. The children practice handwriting, commenting amusingly on one another’s work, learn French and maths, take dictation; read aloud and do art. All the while Georges Lopez is instilling manners and the importance of keeping one’s word. The kids have a hilarious go at the photo –copier . Throughout the extraordinary is used to illuminate the ordinary.
The children play, argue and misbehave. A memorable sequence has Lopez probing the nature of the disagreement between two of his senior pupils; one of whom says next to nothing. We find ourselves siding with the more loquacious of the two until the silent one reveals that he has been provoked through the other’s insults.
Out- of- school sequences are as impressive as those within. The children ‘s education is rounded by the seasons as they toil on the farm, do homework, go sledging in winter and picnicking in summer. We learn to like and respect them as much as we admire their teacher. Nothing is hurried; everything unfolds at its own subtle and reasoned pace. Landscapes and seasons are economically rendered with a tangible feeling for place. Music is as sparingly used as dialogue in this understated masterpiece of sympathetic observation. < less
It may be a documentary but you cannot watch \"être et avoir\" without feeling the snow, and the warmth as you enter the classroom, smelling the grass, and the cows in... more >
It may be a documentary but you cannot watch \"être et avoir\" without feeling the snow, and the warmth as you enter the classroom, smelling the grass, and the cows in the milking shed and above all wanting to be there with the children. Whoever has seen the film will forever miss Jojo, Johan, Marie and the others with a secret pang as you miss you own children after they fled the nest.
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Named as one of the best films of 2002 in the Film Comment poll of 59 international film critics, Etre et Avoir is a documentary that provides an insight into the lear... more >
Named as one of the best films of 2002 in the Film Comment poll of 59 international film critics, Etre et Avoir is a documentary that provides an insight into the learning process of thirteen children, ages 4 to 10, in a one-room schoolhouse. The film begins in December with footage of snow falling on a herd of cows, and continues until the following summer. By the end we have come to know many of the students. Director Nicolas Philibert allows us to re-experience the long forgotten frustrations of learning how to trace letters, express our feelings verbally, count until we run out of numbers, and get along with our classmates.
The teacher, 55-year old George Lopez has taught in the same school for twenty years and has a unique ability to simply be with and respect children for who they are and what they say. He is a model of patience and an example of how to listen without making moral judgements or instant evaluations. Mr. Lopez works closely with each child, showing sensitivity in the way he handles problems as when he asks two fighting students to imagine the effect their behaviour has on others.
When Mr. Lopez announces he is going to retire in another year, the emotion on his face when the children plant kisses on his cheek as they say goodbye for their vacation is deeply moving. Etre et Avoir celebrates the dedication of teachers whose unacknowledged labors make a profound difference in the lives of our children. A film of warmth and humanity, it is the highest grossing French documentary of all time.
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Nicolas Philibert’s documentary sensation Etre Et Avoir focuses on a small village school, deep in the French region of Auvergne, where children aged four to ten are a... more >
Nicolas Philibert’s documentary sensation Etre Et Avoir focuses on a small village school, deep in the French region of Auvergne, where children aged four to ten are all taught by the same man: the serious, bespectacled, bearded, black-clad, vaguely boho professeur Georges Lopez. Over the course of a year, we watch the seasons change, and the pupils starting to develop fundamental skills: with words, with numbers, with one another.
It is strange, on reflection, what the decidedly bucolic Etre Et Avoir elevates to the status of great, compelling drama. One section centres exclusively on whether four year old Jojo will finish his colouring-in before the bell rings for breaktime. But Philibert is blessed with the ability to make the smallest of things utterly involving. This documentarist is also a great editor who knows when to cut and when to leave his camera running. There’s an early scene which seems to be going nowhere, as Lopez lectures two older boys who’ve been caught fighting on their responsibilities to the rest of the class, but which turns 180° in direction when the previously smirking aggressor of the two breaks down in floods of tears. An initially cutesy bit with a stray dog and the younger pupils in the snow develops into a nasty incident of pushing and shoving, and a revealing moment of child psychology.
Philibert gets on camera a real sense of the time, space and atmosphere that’s entirely specific to the classroom: the hesitant whispers of kids trying to keep their chatter out of teacher’s earshot; that persistent, hacking cough only young children seem to get; the ominous silence in the playground whenever someone starts crying. Plenty of funny moments here, too: not least rotund Julien’s attempts at tossing a pancake, or a small child getting a row of affirmative responses to the question “Are you my friend?” until he reaches the one contemporary who says “no”. Young Jojo is, I suspect, the pupil most likely to find himself with a flurry of adoption offers, displaying a constant fascination with anything other than that which he’s supposed to be studying: a wasp he may or may not have seen in the corridor, a ball of a type similar to one he has at home – an observation he makes while sporting felt-tip ink not only on his hands, as you might expect, but also all over his forehead.
In this slightly remote, rural part of the world, support networks are even more important than they might be anywhere else. Multiplication exercises become a family affair; the two older boys earlier caught fighting vow to watch one another’s backs on their arrival at middle school; and the most crucial line of dialogue in the whole film, spoken not by an adult but by one of their charges, is “Il faut l’aider [we must help her]”. Innocence regained, then: it’s the sort of film which sparks baby booms, teacher recruitment drives, and a frantic search for properties in the French countryside, but Philibert goes deeper than a glossy lifestyle magazine portrait, and instead, Etre Et Avoir proves to be filmmaking of great heart and humanity. We’ll be lucky indeed if we see a work of fiction as accomplished this year. < less
