The Kindergarten Teacher 12A
MOST graduates go into teaching for the right reasons – the holidays, the 3pm finishes, final salary pensions…
Others may have been fired up by a character from an inspirational Hollywood movie.
You know the type, the English teacher (it’s always English, never maths or combined sciences) who turns around the lives of a group of unruly youths by making poetry relevant.
Just think of Michelle Pfeiffer handing out Bob Dylan lyrics in Dangerous Minds or all that “captain, my captain” bobbins from Dead Poets Society.
This isn’t that kind of movie. Here, it is the teacher facing a miserable future. The life-changing poetry doesn’t come from a text book or a croaky folk singer, but from the mouth of an adorable five-year-old.
Lisa Spinelli (a neverbetter Maggie Gyllenhaal), the suburban teacher at the centre of this surprisingly ANDY’S RATING: ★★★★
In cinemas on Friday gripping drama, was probably one of those idealistic young things who wanted to change the world. Now she’s working in a nursery school and living in Staten Island (the dullest of New York’s five boroughs) with her nice-but-dim husband (Michael Chernus) and two surly teenagers who seem intent on torpedoing her arty ambitions. “Why don’t you pick up Dad’s camera and lenses again?” she asks her sullen daughter Brittany (Haley Murphy).
“I post cool stuff on Instagram all the time,” she snorts, before returning to her smartphone. Her son Josh (Sam Jules) isn’t playing ball either. She wants the lad to go to university, but he has settled on the army.
“Do you want to risk your life for oil?” Lisa screams at him with a hint of hysteria.
Her only escape is a night-school poetry class, where she reads out her disappointingly mediocre selfpenned verse to Gael García Bernal’s bored lecturer.
It seems Lisa is just one knock away from stress-related sick leave. Then, at school, she notices little Jimmy Roy (Parker Sevak) walking around in a trance. Intrigued, she approaches him and hears him chanting some surprisingly accomplished verse.
“Anna is beautiful,” begins little Jimmy’s poem. “Beautiful enough for me.”
Lisa scribbles it down and reads it out at her next poetry class. Bernal’s teacher breaks into a smile. He thinks he’s just unearthed a new Wordsworth.
For Lisa, Jimmy is the new Mozart, who also revealed his genius at a very young age. When she discovers his father isn’t the arty type, she becomes determined to nurture the little genius on her own.
At this point, a film that began as a thoughtful indie drama turns into a riveting psychological thriller. When Lisa starts preparing Jimmy for a live reading at poetry club (against his father’s wishes), we wonder how far she will go to realise her ambitions. The film gets more intriguing as it gets darker. Lines are crossed, but Lisa remains uncomfortably sympathetic.
To her, Jimmy’s talent needs to be developed quickly before this beautiful mind is sucked into a smartphone screen.
Lisa is definitely projecting her own frustrations on to the boy, but you can see her point.