“Monsieur
Lazhar”
Explores Immigrant
Experience
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades
It’s always interesting
to watch a book or play get transferred to the big screen. Case in point is “Monsieur Lazhar,” a Canadian French-language
film based on a play titled “Bashir Lazhar” by Évelyne de
la Chenelière.
“Bashir Lazhar” was a one-character stage production, while the movie
version lists more than two dozen roles.
For the film, Algerian comedian Mohamed Saïd Fellag takes on the title role
as an immigrant hired to replace an elementary schoolteacher who has
committed suicide. Recovering from a personal tragedy of his own, Monsieur Lazhar
seeks to know his students in spite of their cultural differences. As the
students cope with their teacher’s suicide, Lazhar must cope with the fiery
death of his family, murdered because of his wife’s book exposing corruption in
Algeria.
Think of it as a
foreign-language “Goodbye Mr. Chips” or “Mr. Holland’s Opus” or “Dead Poets
Society” – one of those noble teacher films. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 97%
rating.
At its heart, “Monsieur
Lazhar” – currently playing at the Tropic Cinema – is a powerful portrait of
the immigrant experience.
Although
playwright Évelyne de la Chenelière
had never been a teacher or an immigrant, she wrote the story because “I wanted
to challenge myself by writing something that was very far from my life and
what I knew.”
Directed
by Philippe Falardeau, “Monsieur Lazhar” was nominated as Best
Foreign Language Film in the 2012 Academy Awards. It was produced
by the same company (micro_scope) that gave us the previous year’s
Oscar-contender, “Incendies.”
Asked
if the film was true to her play, de la Chenelière replied: “Absolutely. And
yet Philippe Falardeau took all the freedom he needed to make it his own work.”
She
worked closely with Falardeau on the movie’s script. “It was a long process,”
she said. “When Philippe first wrote all his versions, I would read them.”
Also
being an actress, Évelyne de la
Chenelière benefited from Falardeau’s expanding her one-character play into a
multi-character screenplay. She appears in the film as the mother of a student.
srhoades@aol.com
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