The Kindergarten Teacher

Matthew Martens

An unsubtly strange, striking film on its surface, The KT is less interestingly unsubtle beneath it. Sarit Larry (Hi Sarit!) evinces a magnetic intensity as a student-besotted teacher, or as a poetry-besotted teacher, or, perhaps above all, as a lonely, adrift, longing woman. But the film's attempts to mean something about poetry, or childhood, or the modern world's devouring of either/both of them, fail to cohere.

Kamran

Review at Next Projection: http://nextprojection.com/2015/08/06/kindergarten-teacher-noteworthy-point-view-modern-world/ 82/100 - The Kindergarten Teacher (Lapid, 2014) explores how poetry, amongst other historic arts, is being lost to a world of increasing modernity and materiality. It illustrates how a young genius akin to a young Mozart would go unnoticed today, stifled by a society that simply...

El Biffo

Mixed feelings about this. Interesting style and great acting, but over all, an annoying film, for various reasons (but I don't want to give any spoilers). I love films about kids, but this one isn't really about the kids. Also it isn't plausible, nor surreal, just...huh?

Loz Loory

2.5 Morally chilling. Children are like ants; they are so easily crushed by the world in terrible physical & psychological ways. The teacher's attempts to "help" the boy, beginning with the speech about ants & violence, were horrifying. This boy has a creative process that he is too young to be asked to discuss. He needs to be protected & allowed to grow into a full person, without the pressure of "producing work."

2multo

Will definitely find out more about Hadav Lapid. Intriguing storytelling. Obsession and our personal, collective unconscious fear of our inevitable changing world.

Diderot

A poetry-besotted kindergarten teacher is pathologically obsessed by a student who shows an aptitude for composing short poems. Lapid is definitely a major talent, and Sarit Larry gives a riveting performance of a baffling character.

Caitlin

"The fascism that has risen here, like any fascism, despises poets that think. They didn't shoot Lorca for nothing. In these obscure times, every poem is a miracle."

Joe Pryweller

A difficult film to love, with the teacher both too needy and alienated and the boy virtually unknowable. But in Lapid's world, the strangeness, the easy crossover between right and wrong, the difficulty in living each day as our own, supercede these concerns. Great camera shots showing the height difference between characters to denote power, and powerful facial closeups. One to talk about when it's over.