My film review - To Sir, With Love
In a British High school, during the times of the South African apartheid, teeming with misfits and rejects, an aspiring engineer and teacher Mark Thakeray (Sidney Poitier) will rise to the occasion and bring insight to the future amongst his troubled students. This drama film directed by James Clavell will cleverly draw you into the world of a lower classed English High School and how everything is not set in stone and how one even in the midst of adversity can escape their fate and become someone.
This movie had truly moved me. Being raised in a upper middle class family I did not know the difficulties of poverty and all the troubles that accompanied it. All the characters were all real and believable rather than cookie-cutter high schoolers, you felt their pain, anguish, sadness and even their joy, humor and elation. From the very beginning the film drags you into it without mercy and keeps your eyes peeled to the screen. There is no point where you want to leave because even if you miss one second you will regret it. It was an extraordinarily made film that deserves the highest praise for its genre.
Mark Thakeray is an African man born in South Africa and received an education in Africa to become a communications engineer and has moved to England in order to get a job during economically down times. He gets a teaching job at a lower class school filled with rowdy teenagers like Denham (Christian Roberts) and the charming yet mischievous Pamela Dare (Judy Geeson). He learns that the other teacher succumbed to the stress of teaching the delinquents and committed suicide in which the children celebrated their “victory”. However Mr. Thakeray does not plan to give up. After a immature and crude incident he then adopts a new style of teaching and treats all the students as if they were adults and at first the students are excited at their new founded freedom but then realize the responsibilities of being an adult. After the death of one student’s mother, the once horridly behaved students come together and realize they can be more than what they were born into, they are brought together and become a family, respecting and cherishing one another, they see their weaknesses and become adults.
The acting was not over the top or very poorly done, it was on the very thin line that is just right. Mr. Thakeray was greatly portrayed as a respectable gentleman and the students, although most of their crude language has been ripped from their vocabulary were very real and three dimensional. Even with the film’s low budget and small number of sets, the setting of the area was very clear to be an impoverished area. The costumes expertly fitted the people and teenagers of that time period and were not too expensive or inexpensive. The use of the theme song “To Sir, with Love” was placed at key points during the movie and helped move along the plot and the lyrics inadvertently told the story of the film.
This film was the perfect blend of everything good in film making, it kept you hooked from start to finish. The use of montages, cuts and important scenes made it hard to tear yourself away because you didn’t want to miss the next bit of it because if you didn’t you certainly would regret it. Sidney Poitier did a superb job as Mr. Thakeray and kept you emotionally involved in his journey to teach his students. This film is a must see no matter what genre you like, this will have you loving it from the moment it starts to when it is finished.
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