Movie Review: The Kindergarten Teacher

The Kindergarten Teacher **** / *****

Directed by: Sara Colangelo   

Written by: Sara Colangelo Based on the screenplay by Nadav Lapid.

Starring: Maggie Gyllenhaal (Lisa Spinelli), Parker Sevak (Jimmy Roy), Michael Chernus (Grant Spinelli), Gael García Bernal (Simon), Rosa Salazar (Becca), Sam Jules (Josh Spinelli), Samrat Chakrabarti (Sanjay Roy), Ajay Naidu (Nikhil Roy).

 

The 2014 Israeli film The Kindergarten Teacher, written and directed by Nadav Lapid, is one of those films that has haunted me in the years since I first saw it. It is a disturbing, and enigmatic, movie about a teacher who becomes obsessed with one of her students – and grows convinced that he is a poetry prodigy, growing up in a household that doesn’t value his obvious genius. What starts from there seems somewhat innocent – she wants to encourage his talent – but grows darker and darker as the film progresses, climaxing in a sequence as tense as any thriller – but more willing to leave the viewer dangling with unanswered questions. I really liked it when I first saw it – and like it even more now.

 

Sara Colangelo’s remake of the film is that rare American remake of a foreign film that is worthy of its original – mostly because it respects the original version (this is a fairly close remake) and because Colangelo had the good sense to cast Maggie Gyllenhaal in the lead role, who gives a great performance. Her Lisa Spinelli is a somewhat sad woman – firmly in middle age, with a marriage to a nice, but boring, man with two teenagers who are on the verge of leaving for college, and no longer need her in their day-to-day lives, teaching the same thing to one group of five-year old after another. She is stuck, in other words. What brings her joy is a continuing education poetry class she takes – even though it’s clear that she isn’t really a poet. She can get by writing poetry for class, but they are obvious poems, with obvious metaphors and symbolism – the type of thing that will get you a B in this class, and promptly forgotten by everyone – including the charming teacher, Simon (Gael Garcia Bernal), who Lisa is too infatuated with to wonder why if he is such a good poet, why is he teaching a continuing education night school class in Staten Island?

 

But that changes when she hears one of her students, Jimmy (Parker Sevak), mumbling poetry under his breath. She may not be a very good poet, but she knows enough about poetry to know that this sounds really good – and is certainly way more advanced than any other five-year-old in her class could come up with. She steals these poems to read in her class, and suddenly, everyone loves her – and Simon is paying attention. She wants to encourage Jimmy – but worries that his father, who won’t return her phone calls, doesn’t care and that his nanny, is too absent minded to remember to write down the poems. She slowly starts to sink her claws into Jimmy – who in general, seems like a normal kid. With each passing scene, what she does grows more and more inappropriate.

 

Gyllenhaal is one of the best, most daring, actresses working – and unfortunately, she rarely gets a role this juicy. I think, in the original film. Sarit Larry, wanted to make the character even more enigmatic. Here, I think Gyllenhaal has definite ideas about what makes Lisa tick – she feels like she is no longer needed by her kids, her marriage is boring, her job is boring, and she always thought she was destined for more – perhaps gave it all up when she had kids, and assumed she could get it back when they moved away. But now, in this poetry class, she realizes this vision of herself isn’t the reality – and she latches onto something special she sees in Jimmy. I doubt that Lisa would have reacted this way a decade earlier – when her kids needed her on a day in, day out basis, or perhaps even a decade later, when she had a chance to come to grips with who she really is. But these two things – her feeling that Jimmy is a prodigy, and the fact she realizes she isn’t the special writer she assumed she was – combine at precisely the wrong time, for horrible results. Gyllenhaal does so much in this film, without really showing her work. It’s a great performance, and is really the heart of the film.

 

Overall, I still think the original film is a little bit better. I liked some of the things that this film left out – the friendship the kid has in the original, that isn’t here at all – and I liked how they left everything slightly more mysterious. But I liked what Colangelo and Gyllenhaal accomplish here as well – and I love the fact that they didn’t feel the need to wrap it all up in a neat little package.