A story about grief beautifully shot in cloudy soft tones with lots of light and space, the Quebecois film Monsieur Lazhar manages deep mournfulness and acceptance, somehow hopeful in its expression of the quiet reality of what is, despite how much we wish it were otherwise. A shell-shocked Quebec elementary school class suffering the wake of their teacher’s abrupt suicide is treated to the foreign (Algerian) auspices of Monsieur Bashir Lazhar, revealed to the audience but not the other characters to be a political refugee dealing with a devastating loss of his own. His personal acquaintance with grief allows him a unique and much-needed perspective for the care of his students, one of whom, Simon, blames himself for the suicide and another, Alice, who seems intractably aware of the finality of death and the permanence of its impact. Ultimately Lazhar makes it okay that some things end before their time, expressing in a classroom fable both his goodbye to the children and his commission for their futures—one of hope and acceptance, which is grace.
