95% Monsieur Lazhar

All Critics (62) | Top Critics (28) | Fresh (58) | Rotten (3)

A sad, reflective study of the possibilities, and the impossibilities, inherent in the teacher-student relationship.

"Monsieur Lazhar" is good. Really good.

The film is rich in naturalistic, tossed-off details.

A standard liberal tale about an inspirational teacher gradually deepens into a quiet study of how grief works its way through a community.

It's all a bit neat. But whatever the film's limitations, it's certainly engaging to watch.

Its purpose is to present us with a situation, explore the people involved and show us a man who is dealing with his own deep hurts.

It's a subtle meditation on catharsis, and a gentle indictment of over-regulated education...

An Oscar nominee at this year's Academy Awards and for good reason, Falardeau's film is moving, smart and sensitive. Terrific stuff, in short.

Notions of class, cultural, ideological and emotional violence - or perhaps a little of each - take on vastly difference meanings in this sensitively woven French Canadian journey through Algerian exile, student angst and outsider alienation

A quietly affecting character study...remarkable for its subtlety, charm, poignancy, and generosity of spirit.

Remarkably human, touching, brilliant film that never succumbs to melodrama, finding something truthful in the complex relationship between adults and children forced to grow up too soon.

Monsieur Lazhar does the best job of summing up the appeal of his own movie: "A classroom is a place of friendship, of work and of courtesy ... a place of life."

"Monsieur Lazhar" is a complex, multilayered tale that reveals new meanings as it introduces each new character.

A sensitive and fairly subtle work, with the deceptive simplicity of a well-honed short story.

A subtle, wise, beautifully rendered tale, with exemplary scenes in the classroom between an amateur cast of savvy children and, as Monsieur Lazhar, a great actor, Mohamed Fellag.

Perceptive and humanistic, Monsieur Lazhar unfolds in a world that recognizes and embraces complexity and duality, and isn't dishonest about the piecemeal way in which emotional centeredness is often achieved.

Sensitive, imbued with melancholy

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