[usr 4.5]
A kindergarten teacher in New York becomes obsessed with one of her students whom she believes is a child prodigy.
“The Kindergarten Teacher” is an adaptation of the 2014 Israeli film of the same title, written and directed by Nadav Lapid about a woman named Lisa Spinelli (Maggie Gyllenhaal) whose sudden obsession with one of her students leads to a series of terrible events. When a little boy in her class named Jimmy (Parker Sevak), begins to reveal his advanced poetic talent, Lisa takes notice and develops an unprofessional relationship with him under the pretense of needing to encourage and protect his gift.
The beginning of the movie drags a bit but be patient because it does lay down the foundation for the story. Lisa is an ordinary married woman with a family whom she doesn’t seem to strongly connect with in the way she desires. She spends her day as a kindergarten teacher but most of her energy is put into writing poetry. Trying to excel as a writer, she takes a continuing education class where no one ever appreciates or understands her work. Her life is totally mundane until one day a little boy named Jimmy, who never stood out before in her class, starts pacing back and forth talking to himself. Lisa, amazed at what she sees, begins to write down everything he says. She discovers that he is not just rambling but actually reciting poems. From that moment on she becomes completely obsessed with him to the point where her behavior surpasses unprofessional to downright disturbing, deceitful, and amoral.
Jimmy’s father Nikhil Roy (Ajay Naidu), a business owner, doesn’t spend much time with his son and has no one to carefully watch over him. Because of this, Lisa is able to coerce her way into his life in a very manipulative manner. The first scene where she behaves completely out of line as a professional is during nap time. She begins waking him up to take trips to the bathroom, playground and other places to talk about his poetry. From there she graduates to putting her personal number in his cell phone and tells him to call her anytime if he ever wants to talk. Then she starts calling him and requests that every time he comes up with a new poem to call her so she can write it down. The scenes become more and more dramatic but this is what makes the film exciting. You don’t know how far Lisa is going to go with her erratic behavior.
When Lisa’s professor Simon (Gael Garcia Bernal) starts paying attention to her, which is after she begins to read Jimmy’s poems in class, this sparks a lot of emotions within her. She begins to questions her own ability as a writer and poet when the students in her class gravitate towards Jimmy’s poems, calling them deep and interesting, unlike her own. Simon invites Lisa to a poetry reading at a lounge club and suggests that she reads her work. She does the unthinkable and finds a way to secretly bring Jimmy along to read his poems to the crowd. This is when it is revealed to her professor that she has been reading someone else’s work. He is disturbed by her behavior and asks her to leave his class.
After the poetry reading event, Jimmy’s father transfers him to another school but Lisa will not let go of him. She finds out where he is and at recess comes to take him on what she calls a day trip to the lake. At this point, I was perplexed by Lisa and her behavior but I was anxious to see how this would all play out. The energy of the film kept me going, it literally escalated all the way to the end.
I felt bad for her in a way, like she just went crazy but then the feeling turned into not liking her for unraveling the way she did. By the last scene, I just had it with her and was happy to see her get arrested. Yes, she gets arrested for kidnapping. When she takes Jimmy to the lake, she goes to take a shower and he locks her in the bathroom from the outside. He gets on the phone and calls 911 and tells them he had been kidnapped. Everyone in the theater was relieved and surprised that he knew that this whole relationship was inappropriate. Beforehand, we never get a sense that Jimmy feels threatened by her or afraid. Even at the end, he held her hand. Like he knew somewhere in there she was a good person but what she did was wrong and she needed to be punished for it.
This movie was about so many issues that many of us have. Some of these are our identity with how we see ourselves and what success is in the eyes of others, who define who we are and if what we do is worthy of appreciation and does it matter. Why was Lisa’s poetry not good enough but Jimmy’s got so much praise? Why did Lisa gain affection from her professor once she read the work of someone else that he thought was hers? It opened the door for many discussions, especially crossing boundaries of all kind, professional and ethical.
I loved that this movie exposed a subject matter that a lot of people don’t want to see. The falling apart of a human being, especially a woman, an inner hunger of wanting to be recognized and validated. At the Q&A following the film, Maggie Gyllenhaal said that she never saw the original film and she didn’t do much research, however, she sat in on a kindergarten class on the upper east side in Manhattan and learned a great deal about how to run a kindergarten classroom. She loved the fact that in this film people can see the truth about flawed women that they don’t ordinarily want to see.
I thought Maggie Gyllenhaal was exceptionally great. The cast played well off each other and that little boy, Parker Sevak, was just amazing. This is a film you definitely need to see.
Now available to stream on Netflix
