Director: Christopher Zalla (USA, Mexico). Year of Release: 2023
2011, Matamoros, Mexico – so close to the US border that you can see Texas through an average-sized telescope (of which, more later). A small boy is pushing on old woman in a wheelchair along the road. A kid on a bike speeds past, warning them to move. Shortly afterwards, a truck rushes past, with 2 bloodied men chained to the back of it. This is a common sight in a film which is often punctuated by bleeding bodies in the background and distant gunshots.
Cut to: Jose Ubrina Lopez Elementary, also known as “The School of Punishment”. The school has one of the worst exam results in the country and locks its gates once all the kids have arrived (whether to keep the kids in or bad people out is unclear). A new teacher, Señor Jaurez, has just been transferred from another school. Sergio is still full of enthusiasm, but the other teachers can’t understand why he’d want to work in a place like this, full of “problem kids”.
One of Sergio’s class’s first tasks is to work out how to save as many people as possible in lifeboats which don’t have the capacity for more than 6 passengers each. They are not asked to solve this sitting at their desks, but on top of upturned tables, serving as substitute lifeboats. As the new teacher encourages the kids to play along, most of them are sceptical. Then he leaves the room for half an hour, asking them to work out a series of problems for themselves.
Now I know this is “based on a true story”, but no matter how charismatic a teacher is, in my school the result would have been mayhem, if not downright bloodshed. Here, the kids start discussing amongst themselves exactly what it takes to keep a boat buoyant, and what is the exact relationship between mass, weight, and volume. And then, there’s some added morality. Later, a girl tells Sergio that the solution is to only sell as many tickets as there are places in the lifeboat.
As the film progresses, we meet some of Sergio’s students. First up is Nico, who we first see horsing about in class. Sergio takes him aside saying that when he was a kid, he, too, was the class clown. He continues: “make sure you don’t change one bit”. Nico’s brother already has him carrying illicit packages in his school bag, and is trying to draw him into the criminal underworld. This is made much more likely by everyone, including the teachers, repeatedly calling Nico thick.
Then there’s Paloma, on whom Nico has a secret crush. Paloma dreams of being an astronaut, though her junkie father, who works gathering rubbish, refuses to see any potential in her. Sergio advises Nico not to show off in front of Paloma, but instead to listen to her and encourage her ambitions. Nonetheless, Paloma scours the tip next to the shack which she shares with her dad, searching for magazines, books, and components with which she can build a telescope.
Lupe is another kid whose expectations are limited by her social situation. Sergio’s teaching makes her passionate about Philosophy, and especially John Stuart Mill. She is dismissed by the city library, but finds allies at the University who find her the books which she needs. Lupe dreams of becoming a teacher, maybe a Philosopher, but her pregnant mother tells her that she can’t stay in school for the next few years as who else could look after the baby? Certainly not her brother.
The film’s German subtitle can be translated as “a class for itself”, which works both as a description of the rising self-consciousness of Sergio’s students and an introduction to a Marxist understanding of developing class consciousness. Sergio’s methods are based on getting the kids to think for themselves, to be confident of their own opinion, and to reach a collective understanding based on solidarity and collaboration – not what happens to be on this year’s curriculum.
Much of the film is implicitly devoted to how much you can escape the shackles of your own upbringing. The kids make history, but not in conditions of their own choosing. The school’s only computer is in the head master’s office. There was a second one, but it was stolen as soon as it arrived, and corrupt government officials siphoned off the money allocated to buying a new one. Even the school library is bare. It has an Encyclopedia, but even this is missing several volumes.
For all this, the Philosopher who is most directly evoked in the film is not Marx but the much more liberal Mill, whose theories of Utilitarianism are taken up by the precocious Lupe. Following Mill’s principles. Both Mill and Marx recognised a damaged system, but Mill concentrated his energies on how reforms could be won within that system. While Radical clearly recognises social injustice, its way out ultimately comes through educating exceptional individuals. The rest are doomed to fail.
This limitation in the film’s outlook is seen in its basic acceptance that we can’t change the system. There is one scene in which a corrupt official asks one kid officious questions about square roots and old wars. This is followed by a “gotya” moment in which some of Sergio’s other kids correctly answer the questions. This scene dodges the key argument: it is less important to know the answers of these questions than to know whether there are more important questions to ask.
But even at its weakest point, Radical takes us with it. It is a film which can leave itself open to right wing interpretations (“anyone can succeed if they just try hard enough”), but its heart beats left, and is clearly appalled by social injustice. When Sergio is ordered by the head “not to kick the hornet’s nest”, but deliberately disobeys this order, clearly this is something to cheer. The film is, at times, unconvincing, but it is always inspiring, and a plea for justice within an unjust system.
CinePhil 