Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
ACF Europe #17: The Teacher
Here’s one from the headlines, Ricochet: Tyranny in the classroom, ideology threatening to break up the family, coming between parents and children! My friend @FlaggTaylor recommended I go on Amazon Prime & watch the 2016 movie The Teacher, to do a podcast on it. It’s a Czech story about Slovakia in the ‘80s, about a school where parents and the principal have to deal with a teacher high up in the local Communist party. Just before the collapse of Communism, the question of freedom through education comes up—who will educate the first generation of children destined, unbeknownst to themselves or their parents, to become democratic citizens. With freedom in the near future, there’s something maddening about the corruptions of ideological dictatorship, including the intrigue, abuse of power, and despotic behavior it encourages and covers up for. Of course, something not entirely different, certainly an ideological dictatorship and some parts of despotic administration are driving Americans mad now. So the experience of totalitarianism in Europe might be of us to Americans…
.
Published in Podcasts
Amazon Prime link!
Also available free without commercials, with your library card, on Kanopy.com, link here.
Good to hear, thanks!
This post is an example of Ricochet at its very best! For the price of a membership you can click on Titus’ name and get a list of his posts. Someone who really cares about learning about genuine excellence in film could get more out of reading them than they’d get from two years of film study at Columbia or USC.
With Oscars coming up, there’s a lot of dispirited talk here and the rest of the Rightwebs about the culture. I like to remind them that fifty years ago, we went from films about drugs, rape and riots to five years later, films like Rocky, Star Wars, and Smokey and the Bandit. Change is possible, now as it was then.
But you have to do more than wish for it. That’s what Titus is about; he wants to change it.
Exactly Gary!
Great discussion.
I just finished watching The Teacher, and then listening to the podcast.
I love watching these types of movies, with one of the greatest of this genre, The Lives of Others, about the East German Stasi.
The ending of the movie is actually a realistic one. I’ve also been fascinated to read about the how Germany and the allies who occupied her, handled the Nazis after World War II. It’s partly addressed in Judgement at Nuremberg, where war crime trials at first gradually, and then quickly, tapered off. And realistically, it’s human nature to want to move on as a society, with even the conquerers also wanting to return to normalcy, whether it’s to continue to control the state as the Soviets did East Germany, or the other occupiers in reference to West Germany.
I’ve read books about the American occupation of Japan, and that case too, the war crimes trials quickly tapered off, so that people were allowed to move on.
Good movie, good review.
Thx. It has been interesting so far, but I may have to watch it twice to grok it all. I can see doing it twice because I like listening to the Czech with English subtitles, even though Czech has long been my least favorite of the Slavic languages to listen to. That may change.
Thanks for the post. I just finished watching the movie. Sad.
While watching, I kept thinking it was a dangerous movie; and, hoping none of the teachers in my politically progressive ounty were watching.
Praying they don’t decide to do a Teachers’ Union sponsored seminar promising ‘best practices’ to today’s classrooms.
I was off to Dallas for a couple of days–had the brisket, but missed all the comments–glad y’all watched this! It’s quite a movie!