Tribute to Frederic Wiseman: High School II

 

Director Frederic Wiseman

Deborah Meier

Tribute to Frederic Wiseman:  HIGH SCHOOL II               A                                                 USA  (220 mi)  1994  d: Frederick Wiseman

High School was the second movie I made, and whether anybody else thinks so or not, I like to think I’ve learned something in the intervening 24 years.                                                            —Director Frederick Wiseman

One of the best films about education ever made, alongside Jan Troell’s 1969 Swedish film EENY MEENY MINY MOE, and one of the better Wiseman efforts, simply a brilliant observation of an excellent school as it goes about its business of educating, the first of Wiseman’s films to revisit an earlier subject, a pretty clear answer to what was just his second film, the brilliant HIGH SCHOOL (1968) shot 24 years earlier, choosing in this case the Central Park East Secondary School in Spanish Harlem on Manhattan’s upper East Side, a diverse inner city New York City alternative school of gifted kids that graduates more than 90% of its students, as opposed to 50% for the city as a whole, and has an excellent record in sending and preparing students for college.  While the earlier film looked at a predominately white school in Philadelphia, it presented a collage of images and sequences portraying life inside of the school, capturing the way institutions, in this case schools, molded the people operating inside of them, with the teachers doing the majority of the talking, establishing absolute authority, where a teacher was always patrolling the hallways like a prison guard, often relying upon rigid rules of conformity to supersede classroom learning, expecting students to simply obey.  What stands out today is how utterly mind-deadening an institution it was, as the school was desperately trying to maintain its position of authority in the face of enormous social change of the 60’s, with the pressure of the Vietnam War and the “counterculture” pushing from the outside, all but ignoring the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King that occurred during the filming, where the ideology and repressive values of the school emerged as they reproduced social conditioning from generation to generation, where even today many will still recognize the familiarity of the experience.  The relationship of domination and submission to authority were placed at the same level as the institution’s purely educational missions, becoming, in essence, a time capsule of an earlier era, added to the Library of Congress Film Registry in 1991.  Here the student body is largely black or Latino, 45% black, 45% Latino, and 10% white, the faculty and administrative staff are largely white, which is directly brought into the discussion with a black student who claims at times he vehemently dislikes his white teachers, while his mother is there reminding him that he could just as easily dislike a black teacher, that the real focus should be that nothing should deter him from making his best effort in the classroom.  Unlike the earlier film, there are scenes of students talking among themselves, as students are encouraged to talk openly, providing a look at styles and behaviors while also offering classroom activities, discussions of race, class, and gender, faculty meetings, family conferences, disciplinary problems, sex education, conflict resolution by students, and student council meetings, all of which illustrate the school’s approach to learning.   

A purely observational film, from the very first moments you can tell this school has a completely different agenda from the earlier effort, allowing student input and topical interests, reflective of a more diverse humanity, extolling the virtues of progressive education, where there’s a sincere effort to understand all the different points of view.  The nearly four-hour runtime of the film is essential, as it allows Wiseman to follow discussions and their shifting points of view in greater detail, discovering the classroom sizes are smaller, while the subjects being discussed reflect the social realities faced by the students, with an emphasis on tolerance and respect for other minorities.  We hear an interesting conversation with the principal, who happens to be one of those fussy grandmotherly types who always seems active and alert along with a few advisors who are talking with a returning 15-year old Latina girl who recently had a baby, with her mother and the baby’s father present, discussing the kinds of problems she would likely encounter, including a possible violent conflict with another girl now out of school who may still have unresolved issues to settle, the huge amount of time a newborn demands, the lack of sleep, the pressures of wanting to be with other kids and still having time for her schoolwork, while politely advising her that there are alternative schools that allow young mothers to bring their babies to class.  This is an interesting introduction to some of the school staff while also revealing the special accommodations they are willing to make for students, while at the same time offering a brief glimpse of the student’s home life.  Later we see two students called on the carpet for creating a disturbance, where one teacher is trying to get to the bottom of the problem, and is meandering around the subject, never really getting to the point when one kid bluntly states that the other kid is just trying to be annoying, which brings a smile to this kid’s face, like a light goes on in his head that finally somebody understands.  An hour or so later on into the film, we see this same kid in a peer mediation group discussing a punching and pushing incident over some ill-advised verbal taunting.  This session was one of the more aggravating of the entire film, as they again speak at length talking around the issues, with two older black students as well as a teacher never really holding either kid accountable for their behavior, where the annoying white kid continually states he has no interest in being this black kid’s friend, where the recommended solution is simply to ignore one another, yet they are in every class together, spending more time in each other’s company than with their own families, so this felt like a feeble and untenable solution, never addressing the racial conflict and obvious disrespect the white student was showing his fellow black student.   

Without utilizing any narrative, music, or inner-titles, just a fly-on-the-wall approach to observing what is taking place, always withholding judgment and allowing people to figure things out on their own, it’s clear the filmmaker’s respect for civic institutions makes him a champion of democratic values, yet it takes a while to familiarize ourselves with the players, as there are multiple discussions among students about the recent Rodney King incident where four white Los Angeles police officers were legally absolved of any responsibility in the senseless beating of a black man who offered no resistance, despite incontrovertible evidence of a videotape showing the brutality of the violence inflicted, where he may have suffered some brain damage from the severity of their actions.  The kids were outraged, so some were organizing a student march to city hall to protest the decision, while also displaying a civility about voicing their displeasure, something they felt was lacking in other schools around the country who advocated or resorted to violence.  Of interest, an out of town high school from Michigan was visiting the school, where we witness an all-white, all-girl glee club sing an ultra-whitebread choral rendition that brought many snickers from the audience, all of which was preceded by a young Latino’s speech about getting along, that he was aware of the anger many students felt, reminding them that they needed to greet these kids with respect, that this chorus was not their enemy.  We hear a meeting of the faculty discussing the best way to coordinate the curriculum, where the AP teachers appear challenged by the others, as if they are some kind of elite ivory tower establishment separate from the reality that the rest of the school faces.  One teacher skillfully reminds them that when she attended an AP seminar earlier in the year where some 40 schools were represented, all were private schools except two public schools from New York City, of which they were one, explaining it was exceedingly difficult to remain competitive with these schools and their seemingly unlimited resources, so any extra push AP classes could provide to prepare their kids for college was not only a fairly common practice, but a vitally necessary one. 

We witness classroom sessions discussing the different kinds of love in Shakespeare or Lorraine Hansberry’s changing views on the American Dream, a debate class arguing multiple points of view of the same argument on immigration, a sex education training class for teachers explaining the proper use of condoms, after-school tutoring or in-class help with class assignments or homework, conferences with parents, students and teachers, and occasionally we get views of quiet, empty hallway corridors, where the brightly colored drawings and paintings by the students are decoratively displayed on the walls.  What we never see is any physical education or sports activities, focusing entirely on academics.  The most devastating segment is near the end, when a young boy is being lectured to and berated by his own mother for not being totally forthcoming about his academic deficiencies, where the teachers are all praising his obvious intelligence and ability, but believe he is coasting along, failing to complete certain assignments.  When an interim report of “does not meet expectations” is sent home, the embarrassed mother wants answers, which only places more unbearable pressure on her kid, in a searingly emotional segment that is simply painful to endure.  After a long protracted silence filled with tears, when the kid finally begins to stand up for himself, we learn he’s one of the brightest kids in the class, and probably better than most all other students in the exact same categories for which he was being negatively evaluated, where he has to one by one disagree with the teacher’s ratings, offering his own assessment, which by the end of the discussion is accepted by all as probably being closer to the truth, but this is the school’s way of “motivating” him.  Despite the obvious good intentions, this is an agonizing scene to witness, which is calmly followed afterwards by an uninterrupted speech by the principal, who is never acknowledged, but turns out to be Deborah Meier, the school’s founder, recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship (as is Wiseman) as an innovative educator, perhaps the most renowned educational reformer in America, as she speaks to a group of disinterested, vacant-faced people, describing for them her reasons for what education can provide in people’s lives, a quiet, analytic perspective on intelligence that began with her approach on capturing the attention of kindergarten-age students, utilizing the same approach for elementary and secondary schools, claiming college should be no different, that life itself is a continuing dialogue that we have with ourselves searching for more than what we already know.  

Filmed by John Davey on 16mm, directed, edited, and sound by Wiseman, this is easily one of the most intelligent and skillful approaches to filmmaking that one is ever likely to experience on how to approach the aspirations of knowledge with every new generation, offering as exhibit A an engaging group of students and faculty, capturing some of the more enlivened discussions on the subject of education that we could ever hope to find, with an intensive support system in place, where the remarkable brilliance of youth is simply captivating, where it’s impossible not to be reminded of what it was like to be feverishly young again, a time when our horizons were unclouded, where anything was possible, and where everything that troubles us today was not continually getting in our way of knowing more.  

The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin)

 

Director Colm Bairéad

Catherine Clinch and Andrew Bennett on the set

Producer Cleona Ní Chrualaoí, partner of the director

Irish writer Claire Keegan

THE QUIET GIRL (An Cailín Ciúin)          B                                                                                 Ireland  (95 mi)  2022  d: Colm Bairéad 

If you were mine, I’d never leave you in a house with strangers.                                            —Eibhlín (Carrie Crowley)

This is a film that is not what you expect, subdued, carefully measured, and small in scope, where the entire film is little more than a girl goes and stays with relatives, filled with everyday moments that suggest nothing out of the ordinary, yet it builds emotional complexity by creating plenty of room to breathe, allowing viewers moments of quiet reflection, something not often accessible in films of today, giving this a literary feel, where time is enlarged and expanded, very patiently developing an intrinsic relationship to Irish culture by accentuating the importance of the land and the language.  Adapted from an 85-page extended short story entitled Foster, Foster | The New Yorker (an abridged version), by Wexford author Claire Keegan, which won the Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award in 2009, at the time the world’s richest prize for a story, now part of the school syllabus in Ireland, especially known for its warm empathy and astute observations of people, with the director, whose background is in documentaries, clearly inspired by Lynne Ramsay’s early short film GASMAN (1998), Lynne Ramsay's 1970s Christmas in Scotland YouTube (14:19), which ranks among his all-time favorites, intent on bringing his native language back to the screen.  Listed at #22 of The 50 best films of 2022 | Sight and Sound - BFI, while also among the five Oscar finalists in Best International Feature, one unique aspect of the film is its language, spoken entirely in Irish, winning seven out of ten categories at the Irish Film and Television Awards, becoming the highest-grossing Irish language film of all time, and the only one to receive an Oscar nomination.  While Gaelic refers to a group of languages, the Republic of Ireland’s official language is called Gaeilge, the name for Irish in the Irish language, yet despite being constitutionally declared the country’s official language in 1922 and a compulsory subject in Irish schools, Gaeilge’s usage has declined to the point of being declared endangered by the United Nations, estimating there are only 20,000 to 40,000 Irish speakers worldwide.  Instead, English has become the dominant spoken language of the country, a colonial legacy left behind by the British.  The history of films produced in the Irish language is disappointingly thin, Fís Éireann: Irish Language Films, where Bob Quinn’s POITÍN (1978) was the first feature film to be made entirely in Irish, and it would be thirty years before the next one, while other notable examples only utilize the language briefly, like John Sayle’s THE SECRET OF ROAN INISH (1994), Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006), Steve McQueen’s HUNGER (2008), or John Michael McDonagh’s The Guard (2011).  For many speakers of the Irish language, this may be the first opportunity to hear that language spoken onscreen, given Ireland’s history of suppressing its own language on screens, in classrooms, and in homes in favor of English.  As a minority language, it’s only spoken in certain regions, in the west and northwest, and only occasionally in the south where this story is set.  One person who valiantly fought to hold onto that language is the director’s father, a teacher who only speaks Irish, helping set up an Irish-speaking school in Northern Dublin that included actor Brendan Gleeson as a student.  According to Bairéad in Motherland, Father Tongue - Curzon, he grew up in a bilingual household where his mother spoke English but his father spoke only Irish, claiming “He did this simply out of a deep-rooted belief in the value of language and a conviction that our own, declining native tongue was something worth saving.”

Most films shot in Ireland emphasize the lush greenery of the landscapes, like John Ford’s THE QUIET MAN (1952), David Lean’s Ryan's Daughter (1970), or Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin (2022), but this does not, instead we’re often stuck inside narrowly compressed rooms, the backseat of a car, or glancing out the window of a small kitchen, where an everpresent painting of Jesus Christ hangs on the wall.  The film retains the story’s 1981 setting, a time of turmoil in Ireland where jobs were few, money was scarce, and the violence and civil unrest from the Troubles dominated the lives of ordinary citizens (How the Troubles Began in Northern Ireland - HISTORY), yet those discussions are absent here, told instead from a child’s perspective, withholding adult conversations that wouldn’t have been understood, while also avoiding all sentimentality.  However, by eliminating the first-person perspective of the story, with no added narration, Bairéad instead utilizes silences, relying upon subtleties in capturing the loneliness and sadness of a melancholic, emotionally withdrawn nine-year-old Cáit (Catherine Clinch), as we find ourselves in rural Ireland, 1981, with Cáit seen at the outset hidden in the tall grasses of a field, listening to the sounds of nature, far away from the harsh reality of her dysfunctional family.  When she returns to her house, we quickly realize why she craves solitude, isolated even within her own family, living a life in fear of everything around her, unloved by her parents, neglected by her many siblings who are loud and obnoxious, while ridiculed by her school peers for being a slow student, where it’s evident that poverty has stripped this world of its humanity, with escape from reality being her only recourse, as she desperately tries to find her own way in the world.  Her father (Michael Patric) appears to have drinking and gambling problems, as he gambled away the money to pay workers to cultivate their fields, leaving the family even more destitute and financially troubled, with too many mouths to feed, while her mother (Kate Nic Chonaonaigh) is already worn out and exhausted with more children than she can handle, as an unattended baby is always heard crying in the background, with another child on the way (contraception was inaccessible at that time), while Cáit is viewed as the problem child who has a tendency to wet the bed, reducing her to shame, becoming lost in her own world of daydreams.  So her mother arranges for the troublesome Cáit to spend the summer with her older, distant cousin Eibhlín (Carrie Crowley) and her husband Seán (Andrew Bennett), dairy farmers who live three hours away in Waterford County in southern Ireland, THE QUIET GIRL / AN CAILÍN CIÚIN (2022) movie clip YouTube (2:30), where her father is in such a rush to get back home that he leaves her suitcase in the back seat of the car as he drives off.  Abandoned by her family, left with people who may as well be strangers, with nothing whatsoever that’s familiar to her, the feeling she gets is like being dropped off on a distant planet, having no inkling what to expect, reminiscent of the sad young girls in Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman (2021).  The dialogue is minimalist, with much of the neo-realist story conveyed without words, including period television programs heard running in the background, with a tender piano and strings-infused score composed by Stephen Rennicks, who also wrote the music for Lenny Abrahamson’s 2014 Top Ten List #10 Frank and Room (2015), resulting in a deceptively simple production, where the relationships are scarcely drawn, composed of recurring moments that reflect a life of growing up on a farm, where there are animals and chores and plenty of fresh air, and seemingly miles between neighbors.    

Cáit’s parents simply have too much on their hands to figure out what’s at the root of her inward nature, painfully shy and preferring not to speak mostly, perhaps overcompensating for the lack of attention she never seems to receive in the boisterous clutter of her home life.  Eibhlín, on the other hand, shows her kindness straightaway, very attentive to her needs, tenderly bathing her, brushing her hair, and dressing her in old clothes more suitable for farm work, while Seán remains more distant and withdrawn, busily tending to the daily work around the farm.  In something of a surprise, Eibhlín provides a moral foundation by telling her, “There are no secrets in this house.  Where there’s a secret, there’s shame—and shame is something we can do without.”  Nonetheless, when Cáit accompanies Seán on some daily chores in the barn, but wanders off, he becomes inexplicably angry at her, dispelling any notion of tranquility in the air, suggesting something far deeper lies under the surface, where secrets abound in this gigantic home that is strangely empty.  Thoroughly displeased by his impulsive response, Seán gradually displays more patience, impressed by her willingness to help sweep up in the barn (she was actually searching for another broom when she wandered off earlier) or help feed a young calf, leaving behind little biscuit treats at the breakfast table, before inventing a game to see how fast she can pick up the mail each day, running to the end of a long tree-lined road and back, something she fully enjoys, finally making her feel good about herself.  When an old neighbor dies, she witnesses a funeral service, with one of the women looking after her for a while, allowing Eibhlín and Seán to help out with the guests, but as some neighbors often do, she grows nosy, curious why she’s spending the summer before blurting out shocking personal information that takes Cáit completely by surprise, opening up old wounds, reverting back to her withdrawn demeanor, which is a a noticeable setback.  Taking her aside, Seán assures her, “You don’t have to say anything.  Always remember that.  Many’s a person who missed the opportunity to say nothing and lost much because of it.”  Both mirror each other’s personalities, stoically introverted, lacking the social grace of others, but thoughtful and hard workers nonetheless.  The cinematography by Kate McCullough captures the charm of the Irish countryside, with the sunlight flickering through the trees, with Eibhlín showing her the magic of a hidden well with “secret” skin care properties, yet a moonlit walk to the sea may be the most unforgettable setting, luminous and elegiaic, expressing its own poetry, mirroring an unseen inner transformation taking place while also conveying a child’s innocent but always careful and insightful observations of the world.  On a parallel track, Seán also sings a song in Irish-Gaelic, which is heard but never seen, one of the small wonders beautifully interwoven into the film.  A gentle and restrained story of innate kindness contrasted against the stark neglect and abuse of her home life, the dramatic power is achieved through a meticulous rhythmic structure built upon daily routines, where the accumulation of small, mundane moments resembles the precision of Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce,1080 Bruxelles (1976), newly listed at #1 on the BFI Sight and Sound greatest films of all time poll (Revealed: the results of the 2022 Sight and Sound Greatest ...), especially the way it leads to a cathartic emotional release at the end, with buried emotions finally rising to the surface, conveying the pervasive influence of intergenerational trauma.