User Reviews

This movie is about a dour, strict, and burnt-out single female teacher's reaction to a school shooting. Though a competent teacher, Drea hates her job and the brats she has to keep in line. She sticks to regulations and dry teaching methods in order grind away her time, but is approaching a breaking point. A naive, quirky, and easygoing younger woman joins the faculty, who dares to put the classroom chairs in a circle! Though initially hostile, Drea warms up to Katya's advances, and they become friends despite their very different personalities. But then one day Katya is shot by a student.

Though this premise is mildly interesting, and behind-the-scenes stories of teachers are for some reason intriguing (and who doesn't enjoy a school shooting?) the movie is weighed down with clichés and sentimentality. Teen moms, bullied boys, psychic communication, getting in touch with nature, getting in touch with feelings, a psychologist witchdoctor, a woman's courage...and of course the redeeming conclusion. In other words it plays out like a formulaic chick flick. But I nevertheless rate it highly as a character study due to Anna Loos's performance. I'm not qualified to critique her acting, but the Frau has a strangely sexy scowl.

"Die Lehrerin" or "The Teacher" (really uninspired title) is a German television movie from 2011, so this 90-minute film had its 10th anniversary last year. It is among the more known works by director Tim Trageser and writer Laila Stieler who has worked with supporting actor Axel Prahl on other projects too. But Prahl is sadly not in the center of it all. It is a one-person show by Anna Loos basically. I don't think she is particularly talented. She is one of these actors (like her husband) who may have charisma, recognition value and look pretty attractive for their ages, but in terms of range, they are relatively limited and have a tendency to give the same performance in every film they are in. Now she may not be as bad as Neubauer, Ferres or Thomalla, but she is also far from good enough to carry this film we have here. This is a bit of a pity as she has a good moment here and there, but overall simply not enough.

This is also partially due to the screen play. It is a film that is well-written on some occasions, but really weak on others. It basically always hits rock-bottom when they go for serious drama (the shooting, the alleged suicide) or want to make sure how much everybody loves the title character, what an amazing teacher she is and if she is confronted by enemies on an occasions, then they are always in the wrong. But of course she is a flawed character too as she suffers all the time and does not see how strong and powerful and always she is. Pretty cringeworthy stuff to be honest. Then about the ending, it is a typical example of rushed feel-good ending: Oh yay she is back yes the other teachers missed her so, the students sent her gift cards etc. Very very weak. On a more positive note, Meret Becker was decent with what she had to work with, but it's a bit tough to watch how they clearly limited her character so that she would not take away any attention from Loos. Prahl is fairly good too with what he can do, but I am a bit biased on him as I always like him almost, especially next to Loos' mediocre husband. As a whole, this could have been a good film if they had hit the right notes in terms of subtlety, character writing and realism. And another lead actress would have helped too. The way it actually turned out, it is a nay for me. Don't watch as this is a film made for audiences, not for stories.