The Teacher (Jan Hrebejk, 2016) Slovakia

Reviewed by Natalia de Oliveira Segreto. Viewed at Santa Barbara Film Festival of 2017.

Czech director Jan Hrebejk and writer Petr Jarchovsky work together in their second feature after Divided We Fall from 2000 to bring this dramatic tale alive.

During the finishing decade of communism in Bratislava, we accompany the lives of small little kids in middle school that undergo the unfairness of a very mean and manipulative teacher. Brought up to life through Zuzana Mauréry, teacher Mária Drazdechová shapes her own rules for getting what she wants in her new job. Getting to know what each student’s parents actually do for living is what makes Mária so smart. Zuzana takes the audience to a very stage of rage that you can see it in every single person’s face sitting in the theater. I must admit I felt like my old grandma watching soap operas, letting myself express out loud how much I hated her, truly taken by indignation.

The film counts on different strings at the same time, one at the early arrival of the teacher at school and another of a secret convention of parents of students and the head of the school to determine what is on stake: How far can Mária Drazdechová go to achieve what she wants?

Getting closer and closer to every single student’s reality outside the school, we follow how the teacher ends up messing up their lives and ruining some of the student’s ability to actually deal with school. Under her unfairness, the film brings a very theatrical mode and precise edit, a passing that reminds me a little of Joe Wright’s 2012 Anna Karenina. Very exact. With. A. Own. Rhythm. Very precise.

Tamara Fischer quietly and amazingly plays the young Danka Kucerová and stands out in a melting pot of great performances that the film brings alive together with the star Zuzana Mauréry. The film rightfully touches upon humor and satire knowing exactly when to be serious and when to make us laugh. The Teacher is a strictly careful picture that literally manipulates the audience to its own intention very easily and graciously.