The Lesson (2015)
Directed by: Ruth Platt
Written by: Ruth Platt
Starring: Evan Bendall, Michaela Prchalová, Robert Hands
Available now on Amazon Video
After twenty years of teaching Mister Gale has reached the end of his tether. Maybe it’s the school itself or his choice of methods but for one reason or another the students are all out of control and running wild. However instead of changing tact, working on his discipline methods or finding new ways to engage with young minds he’s about to try a radically different approach. Be warned there’s no heart warming coming of age drama to be found here, his new idea involves taking his frustration out on the teenagers themselves. It’s going to involve a lot of household tools and cable ties. The Lesson (not to be confused with the 2014 Bulgarian drama) is a blend of melodrama drama and gruesome kidnap plot. This is an unusual combination that never really comes together to form a satisfying whole.
The storyline itself might involve education but that doesn’t mean there is anything to be learnt from it. The main characters Fin (Evan Bendall) and his friend Joel (Rory Coltart) are admittedly not the nicest kids. In fact their whole school seems to be a place where control is missing entirely as if they’ve decided to cater exclusively to apathetic delinquents. It doesn’t seem to be located in a stereotypical rough end of town and yet vandalism, theft and drinking are all present and correct. The results unfortunately come off as cartoonish instead of relatable. Within this foul mouthed bunch we’re introduced to the protagonists, and it doesn’t take long for their antics to become tedious.
The script makes some attempt to develop Fin and his older brother Jake by adding a subplot about their absent father, but a series of black and white flashbacks never explain exactly what happened between them. It’s never explored enough to give them any sympathetic traits. Adventure Time this is not. The film spends far too much time on this dead end backstory along with several other fruitless tangents, which seem to exist so that the film can reach ninety minutes. Jake’s girlfriend Mia rounds off the central cast but has similar issues. As well as having problems on the romantic front and with her own family, she seems to be developing feelings for Fin. Calling it a love triangle is probably exaggerating things and it feels like a soap opera.
This all comes to a rather abrupt end in the second act when Fin and Joel find themselves in the clutches of Mr. Gale. After a lot of padding we get to the main event, bloody revenge in an English teacher’s basement. It’s bound to be someone’s fantasy I guess. As a premise this isn’t too bad, although they go to such extremes to make the titular lesson justified. Choosing sides is not really an option when the characters all just seem as bad as each other. The energetic presence of Mister Gale (Robert Hands) is the main piece that works at least. Soon the violence and literature quotations are in full swing. His endless rhetoric of classical sound bites and quotations about the nature of human inspiration hold the film together as he tries to force ideas from Golding and Blake on the unwilling class members.
His long winded tirades at least feel like the writers have done some homework to make it all a convincing blend of torture and dictionary drama. However this brief highlight also starts to bring attention to the same obvious weakness; that the other plot elements exist to stretch this short film idea to feature length. I enjoy a bit of debate on the ideas of irony and allegory as much as anyone, but it’s not enough to fill a whole storyline in this case. The distracting threads from the first part of the film soon reappear as Mia’s drunken mother arrives, her domestic dispute with Jake comes to a head, and to tie all this together a quick coincidence driven conclusion is thrown in at the last minute. All just so that Mister Gale’s hammer and nails can get in a few final blows.
To make things even more patience testing the story drags things out further by including several odd music video style moments, in which characters walk alone at night or simply stare into space. They do at least try and spice things up when Fin begins to have a vision of Joel escaping his bonds, but this has no narrative purpose besides a quick dream sequence. It might be a visual change of pace but the actual substance included here is already very thin. In the end the big conclusion lacks any sense of a character arc for anyone involved. It doesn’t offer the kind of simple redemption or realisation moments that could have been expected from the premise.
To make things more frustrating there are hints at what might have been here. Despite an uneven sound mix the look of the main underground set is moody with effective high contrast lighting. Some work was put into at least some of the production. If only this kind of effort was put into the pacing and writing. They could have added far more depth to all of the characters. Considering that ideas of human motivation (both in terms of brain power and acts of brutality) are actually discussed in the dialogue itself, it’s odd that these aren’t fleshed out properly. Instead it’s all so thinly stretched. The real lesson here is that if you have a fun idea and know a few highly strung people working in classrooms… you probably should just make a short film and move on.
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