The Class
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: December 19, 2008 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
92
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 31 Critic Reviews
Positive:
30
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The New YorkerDavid Denby
I would be surprised if this brilliant and touching film didn't become required viewing for teachers all over the United States. Everyone else should see it as well--it's a wonderful movie. Read full review
100
VarietyJustin Chang
Talky in the best sense, the film exhilarates with its lively, authentic classroom banter while its emotional undercurrents build steadily but almost imperceptibly over a swift 129 minutes. One of the most substantive and purely entertaining movies in competition at Cannes this year. Read full review
100
TimeRichard Schickel
It is hard to think of another film more tightly autobiographical than this one. It's even harder to think of other films that build so gripping a narrative out of a string of comparatively minor and disparate incidents. Read full review
100
SlateDana Stevens
This unassuming movie will nail you to your seat. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
In a class by itself. Read full review
100
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
Cantet's real-time classroom scenes are revelations: They make you understand that teaching is moment to moment, an endless series of negotiations that hang on intangibles—on imagination and empathy and the struggle to stay centered. This is a remarkable movie. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
The Class is clearly a microcosm of contemporary France, beset by social and economic tensions. More than that, though, it's a saga of education's struggles in many parts of the modern world. If only the film were pure fiction. Read full review
100
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
Wherever you were schooled, in public schools or private, in the slums or in the suburbs, you will recognize yourself in this film and laugh and beam and cower. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The movie is bursting with life, energy, fears, frustrations and the quick laughter of a classroom hungry for relief. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
This is one of the screen's most rewarding explorations of the teacher/student relationship in any language. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
I was much more disheartened leaving the movie the first time I saw it than I was the second. Its richness resides in its apparent objectivity. Without sacrificing a sense of hope, Cantet suggests that the school system is just like a certain vexing grammatical tense: imperfect but still fighting against irrelevance. Read full review
100
Washington PostJohn Anderson
The Class is not just the best film released thus far this year. It may be the most gripping. Read full review
100
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
The young cast, all nonactors who developed their characters with Cantet and Bégaudeau, brings the weight of full lives to each of the students. Read full review
100
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
The Class ranks with the very best films ever made about teaching, and it's unlike any English or American film about teaching ever made. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
The beauty of The Class is that it puts the lie to the one-teacher-can-make-a-difference myth propagated by so many other films. Read full review
90
SalonStephanie Zacharek
The Class is a lovely, exhilarating work about the ways in which failure and frustration can open the pathways through which we make sense out of life. Read full review
90
Village VoiceElla Taylor
For anyone who loves language, this cut-and-thrust is a heady delight, so rich and free-flowing in its rhythms that it's hard to decide whether what we're seeing is a vérité-style documentary or a realist drama. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
The reality of François' classroom is so intense that it holds our interest even while the film's dramatic focus is building so quietly under the surface that we don't notice it at first. Read full review
90
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
Here Mr. Cantet -- whose earlier features include "Human Resources" and "Time Out," two other dramas about systems of power -- has done that rarest of things in movies about children: He has allowed them to talk. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
The keen observations of The Class ultimately become a remedial education in themselves. Read full review
88
USA TodayClaudia Puig
The Class is a deeply moving film about the challenges of educating children in a complex and often turbulent world. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Fierce, funny and moving, The Class graduates with honors. It's unmissable. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
French movies are not so neatly resolved. In fact, the point of many French movies, such as this provocative one from director Laurent Cantet, is that some problems don't have satisfying solutions - or resolutions. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Considering the strength of performances given by the 25-or-so teenage actors portraying the students, it's amazing that none of them have previous experience. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
A modestly scaled, sharply observed film. Read full review
80
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
Most impressive, Cantet tracks the racial and ethnic resentments that simmer beneath the classroom discussions but become harder to quell when the parents get involved. Read full review
75
New York PostLou Lumenick
The Class offers no Hollywood ending, but is rewarding for those up to the challenge. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
The Class is simultaneously old school and new, familiar in its themes but unique in design and, at its best, riveting in execution. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
This is the most realistic film about teaching that you're ever likely to see. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldConnie Ogle
Skillfully straddles an intriguing line between reality and fiction. Read full review
60
Film ThreatMatthew Sorrento
The Class is a one-trick show: once you spot its approach, the narrative falls into a routine. To the "nsiders," the film is as familiar as an an aerial virtual reality ride would be to an airplane pilot. (This is hardly a surprise, since Bégaudeau was himself once an insider, though now safe in a film critic's chair.) Read full review
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