Audio transcription

For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Collection page.

John Quackenbush  0:00  

March 7, 2016, the Harvard Film Archive screened The Kindergarten Teacher. This is the audio recording of the introduction and the Q&A that followed. Participating are HFA Director Haden Guest and filmmaker Nadav Lapid.

Haden Guest  0:18  

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. My name is Haden Guest. I'm Director of the Harvard Film Archive. It's a great pleasure to be here tonight to welcome back Nadav Lapid, his second screening here at the HFA. I want to thank Mr. Lapid for making a very long voyage from Israel to Cambridge, to be here to discuss tonight's film The Kindergarten Teacher from 2014, an enigmatic, and truly, I think, fascinating and important film. Last night, we saw Nadav Lapid’s feature debut, The Policeman. And I'd like to argue, however improbable it might seem at first, that The Kindergarten Teacher forms a kind of diptych with that earlier work. The first film being about an alpha male, elite cop, a hired government killer. And the second film about a teacher entrusted with the nurturing care, education and socialization of young children. Both figures are protectors. And both figures are architects, I think, of society in a certain sense, one, perhaps more destructive, one more constructive. And yet in both films—and you'll see in this film, I think, with particular sort of acuity and subtlety—Nadav Lapid questions the role and responsibility of these figures as a way of asking more profound questions about the larger social fabric that they weave.

It's also a film, as you'll see, about language, and not only the poetry spoken by the enigmatic young child that is the heart of the film, but also language and the role that it plays in defining us both as individuals and members of a society and of a country, of a time and a place not necessarily of our choosing, but perhaps, of our making. We have a great privilege of having Nadav Lapid here to talk about this film afterwards. And as you'll see, this is definitely a film that you're going to want to discuss and debate. It's a film that will truly fascinate you. Please join me now in welcoming Nadav Lapid.

[APPLAUSE]

Nadav Lapid  3:00  

Hi. Good evening. I’m sure that I met some of you yesterday, and some of you are newcomers so hello. I hope that as Haden says, after the film, we'll have a complex, interesting discussion. So before, it's better to be short in the [UNKNOWN], so I wish you a nice screening and see you later. Bye.

[APPLAUSE]

John Quackenbush  3:45  

And now Haden Guest.

Haden Guest  3:48  

Please join me in welcoming back Nadav Lapid!

[APPLAUSE]

So Nadav, I thought we maybe we'd start… I’ll ask a couple questions first. This is a film that I think we really need to think about and absorb a little bit. And of course, if there are any pressing or urgent questions, just raise your hand.

But I wanted to start by speaking about the end of the film, this final shot of the boy, suddenly, in this world of music, of the noise. In this film, he’s been... His voice, his presence, his words have exerted such an extraordinary force. And here he is divorced from the teacher suddenly. Again, he doesn't have a voice; it's the music. And I was wondering if we could talk about this final image, which I think, again, we can read it a number of different ways, but I'd love to hear your thoughts about that.

Nadav Lapid  5:13  

I always feel that when I'm trying to analyze my own films, [my analysis] is the pessimistic one. And I think it's a pity because I think that in the film, there's something open. So that's why I'm going to say pessimistic things, but maybe [there are] also other options.

In a way, I think that all the end of the movie is built a little bit like– I mean, you can see a lot of, for example, American movies like this, where someone is kidnapping someone else, and then the police intervene, and the police save the kidnapped one, and back to normality, and everything is okay. And this is more or less what's happening in The Kindergarten Teacher, like, the kid is saved by the police and is flown back to the embarrassing hands of normality. And not only normality of joy. I mean, I think at the end, you can see a normal human form of happiness, of joy: a swimming pool, music, people in bathing suits. It's nice. I mean, no? I mean, most of us would.. And the kid is in the middle of this form of basic happiness. And I think in a way, I wonder, I mean, that's how normality, or that's how even joy looks like. So I mean, where all of this is going to. And I think that in a way—because there's a moment in this hotel room where the kids stands beside the window, and a lot of people think that maybe he might fall and you can imagine all sorts of disasters—and in a way, the film ends with a disaster, but this disaster is normality. And so I think that, in a way, when you see the kid’s face at the end, you ask yourself, where all of this leads to, I mean, where all of this triviality, vulgarity, stupidity leads to. And at the same time, I think you might imagine—because there's something I think, ambivalent and enigmatic in his face, in this expression—I mean, you might tell yourself, “okay, he's just recited his last poem, never again, he would be able to recite words of poetry.” You might tell yourself, “okay, even if he will have another poem, there'll be no one to write it down.” Because the only person who could have identified his talent was taken away. But also, you might tell yourself that he is just meditating and thinking about a new poem about the kindergarten teacher. So I think it's a mixture.

Haden Guest  9:06  

No, I mean, I asked myself, like, what has she taught him in a certain sense? Maybe this lesson of taking him out of the classroom, into the world has actually prepared him for this place, for this ability to actually have his own thoughts, to have his own voice and not to be like the husband at the beginning, lost in front of the television, but I think there is a real ambiguity there.

And the role of music in the film is striking in this sense, because you have all these scenes, this sort of utopia of the dance floor of the music. And, you know, we have it equated with the army, also with this moment where she suddenly finds this release and this kind of spontaneous relationship, but that's also fraught with a real ambiguity. It's both a utopia, and at the same time, there's a danger of losing oneself, no?

Nadav Lapid  10:04  

Yeah, I think there’s something maybe it's in general in my movies. I think there's something that I mean, on one hand, you might look at it as classical or not so classical but it’s a narrative movie where the plot advances and [is] composed, like any movie, from all sorts of scenes where people are talking, discussing. But on the other hand, I think that in a way, the main activity of the characters and the actors in the movie is to declare themselves in front of the camera, like, in a way, you know, there is the scene with the kid's father in the restaurant. So, he gives her a speech, like a very, very existential, capitalistic speech or something like this. But before doing it, he puts–

Haden Guest

Music on.

Nadav Lapid

Yeah, Chet Baker. Yeah. So in a way, he takes care– I mean, first he organizes for him the musical background…

Haden Guest

Drinks. [LAUGHS]

Nadav Lapid

Exactly. So in a way he declares himself by choosing a certain musical background. And his musical background is “Let's Get Lost” of Chet Baker and something strange that this very, very, very tough coal mine businessman, very practical businessmen, from all the possible melodies and songs in the world chooses this “Let's Get Lost” of Chet Baker. But I'm saying it, because in a way, I think for me that these dance scenes in the movie [are] one of the most powerful ways that the character can choose us in order to express itself. And people, they stand in front of the camera and they dance, but they dance themselves in front of the public. I mean, they want to tell something about themselves. They want to declare themselves. And when the kindergarten teacher dances in front of the camera, she wants to declare, “Look at me, here I am. I'm not exactly as you as you imagined,” and etc. That's why I think that the dance there is also a form of desperate shout.

Haden Guest  12:57  

Are there any questions at all from the audience?

From dance, I think we should go to performance, because I think this is the other question. It's like, yes, there's a sense of– I mean, with the father was also interesting. He tells her how much time she has; he says, “I've got thirty minutes,” so there's a sense too of performativity as having this kind of... This is the sort of ground in which oneself is tested as being an individual. And it's a kind of make or break situation. So, seems like in this film, all these characters are being put in this really existential spotlight, right?

Nadav Lapid  13:41  

Yeah, I think that—I don't know, myself, and maybe all of you—but I have this fantasy of finally telling the truth to humanity. I mean, you always have this feeling that people… There’s something essential they don't understand, that if only you could have talked to them, to all of them, you know, to stand on the moon, and to talk to humanity, they would have understood and everything would have been different. They [would have] never voted for Donald Trump or whatever. But I mean, they would have understood  this is something deeper. And then you question yourself, what would you have said in this… and you understand that you don't really know. I mean, I think at the end, there is no convincing speech. If I tomorrow would have had you know, all the TV channels in the world, all the TV cameras in the world. I don't know what... So I think it's a little bit like The Kindergarten Teacher. I mean, like, you know, a teacher... I mean, for her, I think this four-line poem of the kid, she feels that if only the universe could have heard it in a clear and loud voice, his poem, everything would have changed. I mean, for her, it's like an atomic bomb that you throw on all the nonsense in the world in order to cure it, but it's very naive because there is no absolute and total and convincing performance. And in a way, this is also cinema because in cinema and films, you get this possibility to put people a little bit like prisoners in a dark theater, and they're obliged for 90, 100, two hours, I don't know, to watch your film truth, but then again, it's limited. I mean, you begin with this desire to tell everything or to say the most important thing, and you end with the movie, you know, with all its limitations. So as you said, it's about performance.

Haden Guest  16:17  

And, I mean, I'd like to talk about the poems because the first poem—the Hagar poem—you know, she repeats it in the beginning, which is actually a flashback to the husband, and it already in marks a distance between them, because she challenges him, “You don't understand it.” But this is a poem that you wrote, right? This is a poem that you wrote as a boy. And I was wondering if you could talk about how you came to... because there is this autobiographical thread to this film, which your mother edited. And, I was wondering if we could maybe talk a bit about your relationship to this poem, and to the ways in which it has this incantatory quality, that somehow there is a power to it that nobody can quite understand.

Nadav Lapid  17:02  

Yeah, so these poems are poems that I composed and I recited to my nanny when I was four years old, or something like this—I don't remember, I don't have a concrete memory of it—but between the age of four and six years old, I had this strange habit of declaring, “I have a poem, I have a poem,” like the kid starting to work from left to right and right to left and reciting poems, about 100 or 120. And so the first one was “Hagar,” that was a love poem to an older sister of a friend of mine from the kindergarten. I mean, I was four years old, and she was seven years old, so it was desperate. [HADEN LAUGHS] Yeah chanceless. Totally chanceless. But then, yeah. it's an interesting story. I don't know. Okay. So because the thing is that I mean, when the film was released in Israel, there were several interviews, and I told the story about this girl, and how it was chanceless, and then she contacted me on Facebook. [LAUGHTER] And, you know, I mean, today, she's forty-three years old. And she told me they interviewed her and it was really interesting, “but I must tell you one thing. I mean, I was also in love with you. But I didn't dare to tell you. So actually, we're like two characters, you know, in the book of Jane Austen or something like this, like tortured by our desperate love.” Anyhow, so it's not what it is. It was chanceless. You should believe in love. But anyhow, so the first poem was the Hagar poem and last poem was The ending point of the movie, this separation poem. I think I was six years old, or six years old and a half, and in a way looking backward, it was also separation from poetry, because it was the last poem that I wrote in my life and never again [did I write] a poem and I'm totally incapable today to even think in such a way. And these poems were lying in a drawer at my parents’ house. My nanny [who] was an actress as well—not a lot of imagination in the movie—[LAUGHTER] She was writing them down and they were lying for almost thirty years at my parents’ house in the drawer and I think that in a way, I didn't want to look at them because all this poetry thing ended for me with the bitter taste of failure.

And then I opened this drawer, and this was in a way the genesis of the movie—because of the poems in the movie are poems that really belong to this period—but at the same time, I think that the most essential and important and crucial decision that I took was to focus on the kindergarten teacher, because it could have been a film about this poet kid or something like this. I mean, it could have totally been a kind of Billy Elliot or something like this, with his poetry, you know. But it isn't, because I think in a way it corresponded to my actual situation. I mean, I'm not a kid anymore; I'm an adult. And I don't really know this kid who wrote these poems. The only thing I know is the words, so a bit like the kindergarten teacher; I had to deal with these mysterious and strange words. And think in a way, this was the beginning point.

Haden Guest  21:44  

In the film, you're shifting perspective, there’s this point where... these really striking sequences where the camera takes the point of view of the children on the swing, for instance, then other times the point of view of the teacher, and it seems, to a certain point, you're also expressing the ways in which there's the limits for cinema to actually understand those points of view, to understand that experience, to understand…. You know, the teacher tries to have this point, she says, “This is how an adult sees the rain. This is how a child sees the rain. This is how a cat sees the rain.” So there's this point where you're marking these limit points of how far the cinema can go to understand the perspective, experience, personal history, so I feel like the film creates this rich ambiguity where it both wants to go there and wants to say cinema is possible, it's able, that it has the capacity to understand these points of view. At the same time, there are real limit points, right?

Nadav Lapid  22:49  

Yeah, I think you can feel it. It's true. I think you can feel it, for instance, I think all the time there is this doubt around the kid. I mean, there's something about the kid and I think this is something that unites the spectators and the kindergarten teacher, because both the spectators and the kindergarten teacher asked themself “What does the kid think?” I mean, on different levels first, you know, it's kind of this mystery around his poems. Like, she raises this question, “Where do the words come from?” which is a huge question with no answer. But also, to which extent he understands what's happening, to which extent he is pleased, he is furious. And, throughout the film, I think there’s something enigmatic about him, which in a way, gets a certain answer in the last scene, because I think in the last scene, he makes a fundamental choice, the fundamental choice not to be a poet, the fundamental choice to run away from poetry as if it was a deadly disease. Maybe it is a deadly disease.

Haden Guest  24:21  

Although in that phone call, there's something interesting where he gives these details. He says, “There's a bird in the tree.” You know, it's almost as if he's taking his poetic observations from the world and he's actually communicating. He's actually making a difference. He's actually bringing the world to him. At the same time, he's giving a kind of poetry that's his own, no?

Nadav Lapid  24:45  

Yeah. Because I think that he's an instinctive poet. I mean, there's something about him. He has his own language to answer the most basic and banal questions, “Where are you? What's your name? What do you see when you look at the window?” You know?

Haden Guest  25:13  

And again, that window too—you pointed that out—that’s a figure, where could we automatically think, with this kind of thriller mode at the end like, oh, somebody is gonna die. But at the same time, what does he do? He has all those possibilities and he sees the world and he tells, right?

So are there any questions at all from the audience? Yeah. Let's take…. A woman right there, please. And Jeremy will pass you a microphone, so we can all hear your question, clearly. Thank you.

Audience 1  25:41  

The child was a great actor. Can you talk about him a little bit?

Haden Guest  25:44  

Can we talk about the actor a little bit? The child?

Nadav Lapid  25:51  

Yeah, so it was evident from the beginning that of the most complicated stages would be the casting of the child. {eople were sent all over Israel to look for him—like, luckily, it's a small country—but at the end, he was found in a gym class in a small suburb of Tel Aviv. And he was really young. He celebrated his fifth anniversary during the shooting. So he was even, in a way, younger than the character that he performs.

I think that the main decision regarding the casting of this child was at the beginning. We had the natural tendency to do what is usually done with kids, which means to take an older child, who physically looks younger, like to take, I don't know, eight-years-old child who looks younger. And in the beginning, the casting focused on eight years, even nine-year-old child, but it was a moment that we understood that there's something in this age, five-years-old, that combines—quite often—a huge verbal capacity, a capacity of imagination, and something very basic in the gestures, in the body movement, in the body language. And that's why for example, from time to time, while reciting complex words, when he walks from left to right, he almost falls down. Because he’s still a combination of, I don't know, baby and adult. So this was the moment when we understood that the actor should be more or less the same age. Yeah, and then we found this kid. Looking backward, it was really kind of a miracle.

And I mean, working with him was quite easy—then again, I never had before a kid in my films. So for me, it was the first time that instead of telling him, “Call me after you read the script,” I told him something like, “Call me after your mom reads [to] you…” But I think he has very strong instincts. And the thing that surprised me most with him was I heard all sorts of stories about [kid actors] that they totally confuse the film and reality and they insist to be called after the character. And he was a pure actor. I mean, there is this scene when they sing this football fan’s song. (And, he was totally obsessed by dinosaurs. He was all the time talking about dinosaurs. It was quite tiring in that moment.) And then, I remember he was shouting like—I mean, you saw the movie—he was shouting like crazy. He became pale. We thought he's going to faint. And the moment that I said, “Cut!” he told me, “Nadav if there was a battle between three elephants and the dinosaurs, who wins?” [LAUGHTER] and I understood that all this time you were thinking about it. You couldn't care less about the movie, you were thinking about the battle, but since this is real, a pure actor... Yeah. No, he was really easy to work with.

Haden Guest  29:59  

Let’s take a question from the gentlemen in gray.

Audience 2  30:05  

My question is whether there is family lore about any of the imagery in the poetry, because matador or bullfighting imagery is not what one expects from a 4, 5, 6-year-old.

Haden Guest  30:27  

In Israel, right. [LAUGHS]

Nadav Lapid  30:31  

So the question is, what...?

Haden Guest  30:35  

Does it come from any of your family history, legends and lore?

Nadav Lapid  30:39  

I mean, I don't belong to a family of matadors. [LAUGHTER] I would like to! I mean, really I would love to tell them stories about my grandfather was this famous matador, but it's not as romantic as this.

[INAUDIBLE AUDIENCE COMMENTS]

Nadav Lapid  31:14  

I don't know. I really have no idea. And I mean, my parents, they didn't tell me because really this process took place between myself and this nanny. And I have no idea. And then–

Haden Guest  31:41  

But I feel this is one of the things that film asks, like, what is the origin inspiration for the creative imagination, where does it come from? And so to have this question being asked, I think is quite wonderful, because the film's asking the same question.

Nadav Lapid

Exactly.

Haden Guest

“How is a poem possible?”

Nadav Lapid  31:57  

Exactly. And I think, in a way, each poetry fan would have dreamt—I'm not comparing, of course, with people who admire porcelain, okay? They could dream about the possibility to follow porcelain twenty-four-hours-a-day, in order to understand where these words come from. I mean, they fantasize that if only they could—maybe in each artistic creation… If you only would follow Stanley Kubrick during seventy years–

Haden Guest

Watch out!

Nadav Lapid 

Yeah, you would understand. But so this kindergarten teacher, she gets this opportunity, because she has the opportunity to follow her favorite poet, and even to try to encourage the poetic process by killing an ant in front of his face, forcing him to look at the rain. But it stays enigmatic. It stays mysterious. I mean, it's like the question that one must raise, knowing that there would never be an answer.

Haden Guest  33:20  

And she is herself a student with a relationship with the teacher. I mean, that mirroring of this idea, though... I feel like the film is such an interrogation about–  Again, it has to do, I think, with meaning and language. I mean, poetry is just one expression of it. Like, where does meaning, in a sense, come from? Where does that sort of social contract of words come from and what weight and responsibility does it have? No?

Nadav Lapid  33:51  

Yeah, yeah. And that's why I think that's why I think poetry is—I don't like the word metaphor, but I don't find any better one. Because, you know, there's something about poetry that you use exactly the same words, but they [have] a different meaning. I mean, you use the same words that you use when you go to the supermarket. But in a strange way, in a different formula that they go to two totally different paths. So this is also part of the frustration of the kindergarten teacher because in a way, she's charged with such powerful emotions and desire, ideas and thoughts, and when the words come out of her mouth, they are banal. It’s hard.

Haden Guest  34:53  

Other questions? Yes. The gentleman right here...

Audience 3  35:02  

The structure of this film reminded me a lot of the structure of the film yesterday where there were two groups of people yesterday, but it starts with somebody who... an ideal. And then people begin to lie. And then they become very abusive. You had the same scene with man massaging the pregnant wife's legs, this [INAUDIBLE]. And then they go off and do some extreme, extreme things where they violate other people in extremely severe ways. And this one has a bit of a counternarrative with the kid, the possibility that the kids raise but I didn't know. I was just thinking about that. It's a very hard paradigm.

Nadav Lapid  36:04  

And I agree because I think that both films deal with [an] idealistic person. I mean, talking about this kindergarten teacher, I think, in a way, she's the classical, simple character, a simple hero, because she's a forty-something kindergarten teacher, married, two kids, lives in this suburb or whatever. But at the same time, she's aiming very high, because not only she wants to save the kid’s words, and not only she wants to save the kid, not only she wants to save herself, or to give meaning to her life, I think she really wants to redeem a world that went wrong in a way, I mean, she really sees herself as a kind of– For her, it's a kind of crusade. She really thinks that her life turned upside down hearing accidentally these four lines of poetry. She really thinks that that a strange kid mumbling bizarre words is a kind of messiah who could save a world that got addicted to stupidity and to nonsense. And throughout the movie, just like you say, you start to see all the contradictions or the gap that grows up between these noble ambitions and life, you know, daily life.

I remember that at the end of the screening of the movie once a spectator woman came to me and told me, “I wouldn't like my kid to be awakened, even in order to watch the rain” or something like this. And I think it's a question. At the same time, I think that this kindergarten teacher identifies something that is very accurate. She realizes that the biggest danger to the artist is not the external word, but it's the artist himself. I mean, in a way, she identifies the fact that the biggest danger to the kid’s words is the kid himself. And that's why in a way, also, she makes this separation. I mean, she's totally, totally, totally devoted to each word that goes out of his mouth, each word of poetry that goes out of his mouth. You have the feeling that for her, it's the most precious and important thing. I mean, the only precious thing in the world is the next poem that the kid will recite. He declares, “I have a poem” in the middle of the sea. She runs to the beach to take a pen and her notebook. If tomorrow he would have gone to the moon, she would follow [him]. But the kid himself, the kid himself is less precious. I mean, it's like the artist is not as important as his art and the director is less important than his film.

Haden Guest  40:02  

There’s something in the film, both your films—The Policeman and The Kindergarten Teacher—they have these titles. I feel like in this film, all the adults that have these positions, roles, which include bohemians, include poets... There's a kind of narrowness, there's a kind of constriction of that world. of that place that you really hold up as being, I don't know, kind of a condition and a problem, a reality and a problem and the child as somehow having the possibility to cross those boundaries. And so it seems there's something there that I find really profound. I mean, these performances of the poem in that little that workshop, which, in a sense, give it a just a completely different meaning, but they also robbed the poem from the child. They steal them from him.

Nadav Lapid  40:58  

I think it's a bit like, I don't know, a little bit like a Greek theatre. They are bound to their basic roles. I'm the father, I'm a businessman, I'm the uncle. And each one of them in a way, sings his essential song. And that's why I said in a way, there are a lot of scenes of dialogue, but it's not really dialogue, because in real dialogue, they talk one to the other, but actually, they declare their essential role in life and they cannot cross it. They fulfill it with a lot of devotion, like the teacher is a teacher, the father is a father, but they are totally unable to step backwards. And in this sense, I think, there is this question to which extent the kindergarten teacher is a kindergarten teacher. I mean, because kindergarten teacher is a strange, strange position, because the kindergarten teacher is the first representative of society to be in contact with the newcomers to the world. The kindergarten teacher is the first person who meets these very young kids in order to explain to them what's good and what's bad, what's positive, what's negative, what's important and what's marginal, to guide them in this path in order to become good citizens.

Haden Guest  43:03  

Yeah, no, and there are real ambiguities there. The fact that she doesn't interrupt that really nasty soccer chant between the kids. So you also raise questions like, What is she teaching? Which I think is really important and quite profound.

Are there other questions, comments? David.

David Pendleton  43:28  

But it seems to me that there's also a real idealist impulse in both of the films too—in Policeman and The Kindergarten Teacher—it seems to me that there's this tension in both films between this world that needs redemption, and yet the attempts to redeem it are doomed to failure. So that for instance, the performance becomes a failure, the kids' poems become a failure as soon as another person starts to repeat them because somehow they're no longer authentic. And in the case of the revolutionaries, they have this righteous indignation, but they have no authentic way of expressing it. And so I feel like there's this tension in your films between this sort of idealism and usually, you know, the solace of the anti-idealist is materialism. And you seem to have no faith in that either. So there's a sort of tragic vision there.

I guess I'm thinking about two moments in this film, in relation to all of this. One is precisely the scene in the club. There seems to be no viable realm of culture in either film. I think it's the same club in both films—right?—where we see these performances that seem like kind of failures. And in tonight's film, it's much more, perhaps, open-ended. That's the dance that you're talking about. I'm sorry, I'm going on. I'll just wrap it up by saying all this makes me wonder about the very opening shot of this film where the actor accidentally on purpose hits the camera. It seems like there's, there's a moment there to talk about in relation to all of this, too.

Nadav Lapid  45:06  

Yeah, well, I have two answers. First of all, I think that, just as you said, I think basically all these movies—one could read them, or maybe they relate to something that I feel in a very profound way, I don't know. Maybe you feel it as well. Or maybe you know it as well from your own life: these gaps between certain moments, seconds in life, when you feel that you feel something true and sincere and real, sometime, I don't know, when you hear music, sometimes when you walk all alone in the street, These moments, when you feel you understood something, and then the way these moments are wasted, disappear, and become fake, lose their authenticity. And I think the gap between this desperate desire to preserve this feeling and the incapacity to preserve it. A little bit like, maybe the moments when you recite a poem... and because there's something about this kindergarten teacher, she wants to live all the time in a poetic way. Maybe because she's unable to write a poem herself, but she wants in a way that life will be an eternal, creative process, or creative moments she wants to– You know, in the scene, when she wakes up the kid in order to look at the rain, but she doesn't want him to look at the rain, she wants him to look at his words. I mean, she wants him to, you want both of them to look or to try to understand or to try to observe imaginative words that will be at the end crystallized to a point. And so this desire to live a poetic life, or to preserve these unique moments and to turn them to constant reality—which is totally understandable—is also doomed to fail.

And regarding the beginning of the movie, I mean, I read all sorts of reviews written about it, and were like, you know, “breaking the fourth wall, Godard…” Why not? I mean, it's great. But I must say that, for me, there were two ideas behind it. And the main one was that, I think that the rebellion of this kindergarten teacher is the rebellion against the triviality. Because the film begins with maybe the most fundamental image of our time: men lying on a sofa watching a mediocre TV show. I mean, I think if one should have described our society from outer space, he would have chosen this image, and this image is normality, is triviality, is banality, is evidence. And this kindergarten teacher she goes to war, she goes to crusade against normality, against what most people would and I think there's something in the beginning, you know, that the camera... I mean, the guy bounced the camera with his elbow and the camera is shaken, the frame is shaken. And in a way I told myself that for one second, the camera adapts the point of view of the kindergarten teacher—meaning, imagine what would have happened if each time that a man lying on his sof, watching a mediocre TV, the universe would have shaken? I guess it would have shaken all the time. But I mean, there's something that for one second, the camera doesn't accept the normality of this image, like the camera declares, “This is horrible. This is a disaster.” I mean, you cannot stay indifferent looking at this image. So this is one thing, and the second thing… I mean, in a way, I like the idea that the film begins with bad filmmaking. I mean, it's always problematic. You know, it's nice when people write about films, but the problematic thing is that people arrive to the theater knowing all sorts of things. But I remember that in the premiere in Cannes, there were people who thought that it wasn't intentional. They said “Ah, you had this mistake in the beginning.” So I like the idea that the film begins with a mistake.

Haden Guest  50:46  

You also begin with the foot. I mean, that's the other thing. This foot that's half cut off. It's both this declaration, I mean, TV as this basest human interaction, but also has to do with the sort of corporeality of your films. In your films, like the beginning of Policeman, people are getting too close to the camera. Here, we've got the little kid going right up to the camera. I feel like your films are constantly pushing the limits of the sort of expressivity of the human body, the dancing….

Nadav Lapid  51:21  

Yeah, I think that it begins with my anxiety that people don't look anymore at the screen. I mean, it's based on a lack of confidence, of self-confidence, or the desire to oblige people to look, so I'm going to shake the screen. But I must say that here, there was also the—because I mean, those of you who saw The Policeman and also here—I belong to this family of filmmakers which basically believe in very complicated long sequence shots with a lot of camera movements, and everything is based on very accurate timing, and the camera moves from left to right and right to left, mise-en-scène, etc, etc. And in this film, there was the clear challenge to do all of this with, sometimes with twenty-five kids of five years old, which is not evident. So with the DP, we made some rehearsals in order to check if it's working, and it was a total disaster. And then I think there was a moment that we understood that if you choose to make a film called The Kindergarten Teacher, which takes place in the kindergarten, kids and childhood cannot stay only as an artistic element; it should be also a substance. And there's something about kids that you cannot—and it's not also interesting—but you cannot predict their gestures, their movements. I mean, it's not interesting to turn kids into second degree adults. And that's why there was a moment that we understood that, unlike Policeman, that in a way there’s something essential in the in the cinematography of the movie, which is the tension between the camera and the people which are between the frame and the people in the middle of the frame, which means that the camera is very... Everything is very precise and accurate with the camera movements, but the people in the frame, sometimes they don't respect the camera. You don't respect the distance that the camera demands. They get too close, you know, in the beginning the scene of when the kids enter and they say “Good morning,” so the frame is stable, and since at this age, there are huge differences of heights between the kids—mostly the girls are higher than the boys—so sometimes you see a very tall girl and you don't see her face, and then you see a very small kid and you hardly see him. As if the kids don't obey the framing, and I think in the heart of the movie and the cinematography of the movie, there is this tension between the characters, the actors, the bodies, and the camera—a little bit like with this Ethiopian... the nanny who gets, in a way, too close to the camera.

Haden Guest  55:16  

A question back there? Amanda, right in front...

Audience 4  55:23  

Was the kindergarten teacher's cigarette smoking meant as the signal or...? Well, a signal that she's a bad guy, because that's an assumption of an American audience.

Nadav Lapid  55:44  

I think it's a very American question. I don't think in France, for example, someone would have asked it.

Haden Guest  55:53  

Well, they both smoke, right? The nanny smokes too.

Nadav Lapid  56:03  

I would say that throughout the film, I mean, on certain points or aspects, she's a very classical kindergarten teacher, for example, you know, in the ceremony, when they sing this holiday song, and they do the ceremony, she's a very classical kindergarten teacher. I mean, she doesn't have any…. For me, it was important that she wouldn't be, I don't know, a left-wing kindergarten teacher. I mean, she's patriotic. You know, she really believes in the victory of the Jews over the Greeks. This historical, strange holiday that we celebrate each year.

[INAUDIBLE AUDIENCE QUESTION]

Nadav Lapid  57:29  

Yeah, I think in a way the question is, “Is she really the bad guy?” which is a different question.

Haden Guest  57:37  

I don't know if, to tell you the truth, that that feeling is universal about cigarette smoking today, even here. But thanks for the question.

Haden Guest  57:49  

Well, look, I want to thank Nadav Lapid for these really wonderful two nights and for this really fantastic film and conversation. Please join me in thanking Nadav Lapid!

[APPLAUSE]

©Harvard Film Archive

The discovery of a preternaturally erudite poet in her kindergarten class opens a complex door for Nira, the unsettled character of the title. It seems all who encounter young Yoav experience the phenomenon in a different way, and no one except for Nira seems to recognize the depth of his strange gift. Holding him in a sometimes uncomfortably exalted regard, Nira wants to foster his poetry without corrupting its purity, yet even she is not immune to taking advantage of his seemingly effortless lyricism for her own, unresolved ends. With Lapid’s uniquely quiet strains of humor, pathos and suspense, the film darkly ponders what to do with transcendence, with authentic expression, with elusive, baffling beauty and truth. In the midst of a world burdened by so much surface noise, Nira attempts to realize her own radical poem through one direct, impossible action.