Lifeblood Of Fassbinder's Entre Les Murs

It is routine and expected from the students, they are not rebelling but meeting the expectations set for them. The student’s conformity to these expectations only feeds further categorization of the students as a group outside of mainline French culture. Within the walls the students are monolithically believed to be incapable of reading ‘real’ French texts, like Voltaire. Outside of the walls — outside the systemic dictates— one student is capable of reading and digesting Plato’s Republic. Another student asks for advanced work in student conferences, semi-detached from the expectations system. These instances, by drawing a contrast to life outside the system, make clear the symbiotic relationship between the societal expectations and the students behavior. The system encourages further marginalization; and the students rebellion to this marginalization only encourages the system. …show more content…
Where Fassbinder calls attention to the insincerity via stasis and deliberate movement, giving the illusion of all behavior being scripted, François Bégaudeau takes a different approach in Entre les Murs. The theme is the lifeblood of Fassbinder’s film and every scene calls attention to it, Bégaudeau holds his punch until the very end. In the last scene in the classroom a student approaches M. Marin — after the rest of the class has stated what they allegedly learned that year — and informs him of the truth, she didn't learn anything. The entire year, all the rituals of conformity, the overbearing support of the school system, had been for not. Nothing meaningful arose from it, the class had been a