In drama, it is very rare for myself to come across a piece that attempts to tell a story in the social realist manner that seems to go too far, The Class (2007) went too far. Although it is important to be free to discuss the issues and social injustices in our society, (especially when children are concerned) if a subject is pushed beyond even the most extreme cases of reality it inherently takes away any emotional impact or serious message a work of this sort may wish to convey.
As I have said, the film goes too far. It is a story about teenage bullying in a high school but comes across as a group of sociopaths partaking in or at the least tolerating the events that go far beyond that of which any mentally stable person would allow to happen.
The story begins with a boy Joosep playing basketball with the rest of the class. As the story progresses we discover that he is actually being bullied by the rest of the pupils – not just some of his class members, but practically all of them. Some of them are violent, others are verbally abusive and the rest remain socially intolerant to Joosep. Yet one day, one of the others (Kaspar) thinks that things might be going to far and interferes. Rather than causing the others to reflect on their behaviour however, this instead adversely splits the group hatred between Joosep and Kasper. Unlike before, the group bullying fitfully intensifies to an unbelievable degree.
It is easy to see that the film is an attempt to examine the group behaviour surrounding an incident of school bullying. It's an exercise of sorts, a kind of deconstruction of what kind of behaviour may cause a couple of students to go on a school shooting. The problem is though that the events that lead up to Kasper and Joosep reaching their breaking point seems too unrealistic and extreme to have ever been reached by a group of students. As you watch the events unfold one after the other it just becomes to fantastical for these events to have possibly happened in the time the film pretends they preceded one another. Why would none of the student’s question what is going on? Why is it that only Kasper attempts to stop what is going on? And why is it that none of the teachers are informed of what is really happening?
The only way these events would happen as the film states is if the students were a large combination of psycho and sociopaths who were mentally unstable and apathetic to the bullying and subsequent torture of others before their very eyes. The point being that the events as they are portrayed are unbelievable; taking away from much of the emotional impact that such a film could potentially have had.
That is not to say that the film doesn’t have its strengths. The acting is astonishing considering the young age of much of the cast and the subject matter. Direction in the film is also well handled, with a really intense progression in the atmosphere building throughout. It is through these aspects I believe that many other critics have misread the film as one that is intensely gritty and truthful to its subject matter. However for a film to be any of these things it must refrain from exaggeration or over enveloping the actions of its characters. The Class unfortunately doesn’t have enough restraint in these areas to be any of these things.
If you were to compare it to the likes of Gus Van Sant’s Elephant (2003) with it’s loose narrative around a similar school shooting in the US, you will see how it never attempts to explain the actions of the shooters. Instead of this it focuses on numerous characters in the school during the day of the shootings. Because of this, we as an audience are left to speculate what has happened and why. Like The Class, Elephant questions what has happened and why such shootings would occur. Yet, unlike The Class this is achieved without resulting to tabloid like speculation and to an extent, exploitation of the real tragedies that have occurred.
Nevertheless the film does have heart. Although the antagonistic class are often left under developed, the characters of Joosep and Kasper do by the end of the film feel like real people. In scenes between the two of them you get to learn of their lives, their dreams and more importantly their sense of the situation. Throughout the film they’re constantly thinking over the actions of the others and the way they react to them. In the process you really get a sense of who they are as people and what the future could hold for them if things were better for them. But even as this happens and things take a turn for the worst, even at the point of deciding to go on a killing spree against those who have effectively tortured them, you almost agree with them and their choice of action. The problem is that if the antagonistic bullies were developed on any kind of realistic level (as opposed to being varied combinations of apathetic, psychotic and sociopathic beings) then we would never agree as an audience member to the killing of children in a mass shooting. The truth is that these characters don’t come across as real people; instead they’re evil caricatures.
It’s quite ironic in a way really, as the film is almost a complete twist on the right wing tabloid portrayals of such events. Instead it is the victims of a mass shooting that are demonised and the killers themselves who are presented as the humanised victims.
Nonetheless, even with these faults I still believe the film is worth a watch. It is rare to see a film take a subject such as this and attempt to examine how the situation of a school shooting may come about. Although it does come across as eccentric in it’s presentation of these developing events, the actual protagonists character development takes a rather subtle tone. I don’t believe that the film was successful under the merits that it aimed for in it’s extention towards realism, however I do think that what it failed at shouldn’t be a deterrent to anyone thinking about viewing the film for the first time. My criticism here would most likely split opinion – so don't allow my biasis to sway your opinion and give this film a watch for yourself.
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