RADICAL

Mexico, 2023, 125 minutes, Colour.

Eugenio Derbez, Daniel Haddad, Jennifer Trejo, Mia Fernandez Solis, Danilo Guardiola Escobar.

Directed by Christopher Zalla.

Potential?

Recognising potential, encouraging opportunities, creativity?

Radical is a film about education. It is set in a Mexican town, 2011. The screenplay is based on an article in the magazine, Wyatt, by Joshua Davis: A Radical Way of Unleashing a Generation of Geniuses 2013. The article was based on a teacher and experiences in 2011. And, audiences will begin to remember films on creative education that they have appreciated in the past, the personal touch with To Sir, With Love, or the creativity of Dead Poets Society.

The action is situated in a seaside Mexican town, poor and undeveloped, mothers working night shifts, a father owning his living by fossicking in a mountainous rubbish tip, dead bodies on the streets… This is the background for the children who go to the local school. The principal is frustrated, is school getting some of the lowest assessments in the annual tests, a disgruntled staff who are ready to cheat by getting the test cancers early and rigging the results, corruption in the offices in the local city, promises of computers but there never being delivered…

Then comes the new teacher, Sergio, played by popular actor Eugenio Deberz, full of creative vitality. He has worked in the system, become disillusioned with students not appreciating their education, determined to find creative ways, especially for the top year in primary school.

We, the audience, are immersed in his methods, perhaps sharing the initial stunned silence of the young students who really do not know what he is asking of them, but, gradually responding, his asking questions, is one speculating, experiments, different seating in the classroom, out into the schoolyard to test their ideas – the initial question concerns flotation, density and weight, perhaps a challenge to many of us in the audience, but with growing zest, teacher and principal in bathtubs to check floating, we see that this experiential way of learning means that the knowledge is personalised.

The film shows Sergio and his zest, his communicating it to the rather large principal who becomes more and more sympathetic. The screenplay highlights three of the students, Paloma, who helps her widowed father collect metal scraps but who has a love for physics, astronomy, and telescope, and that keyword: Potential. There is Nico, forced by his brother to be a drug courier, even at school, low self-esteem, encouraged by Sergio, discovering a love for learning, and a terrible dilemma in facing the gang. There is also, Lupa, her parents on night shift, her caring for the two younger children, her mother pregnant, managing the household – and Sergio responding to one observation by mentioning the word philosophy which sends her to libraries, and her discovery a love of reading, of thinking through moral issues.

Most audiences have found the film positive, heartwarming, hopeful – and some dissenters who are wary of sentiment and are keen to label this kind of film as kitsch. But, Radical is definitely a film for most audiences.

1. The title of the basic article, A Radical Way of Unleashing a Generation of Geniuses?
2. Mexico, 2011, town, poor, artwork, drug gangs, deaths in the streets, families, the school? The musical score?
3. The introduction to the town, the boy wheeling his grandmother (and the film ending with his still looking in, not able to go to school)? Emerged out of the way, the speeding vehicle, dragging the prisoners? The tone?
4. Lupa and her family, father’s work, mother on night shifts and getting out in the morning, her mother pregnant again, the two little children, and keeping the household, preparing the breakfast? Taking the children to school?
5. Nico and his brother, the hut, by the sea, voting disrepair, his being a courier with the drugs, on the bike, exchanging packs, feeling an outsider?
6. Paloma, her ailing father, on the vast tip mountain, scavenging, the donkey, taking the goods to the dealer, her challenging him with the payment?
7. The school, the principal, his role, the demands, getting to like him throughout the film, the staff room, the hostility to Sergio, the exam tests and cheating with the results? Spurning Sergio?
8. Sergio, his personality, arrival, references from the previous school, his explanation that he had lost the support of children, wanting to start afresh, in a poor situation? His philosophy of teaching, getting the children into action, the personal touch, asking them questions, telling them stories, arousing their curiosity, getting them to investigate, experiments? The initial stunned silence, arrangement of the desks, their surprise, the questions about flotation, their speculations, thinking about them, testing balloons, the weight of Sergio compared with the weight of the principal, density, the principal joining in the experiments? The learning?
9. Sergio, his story, his wife and young child, at home, his confronting the corrupt authorities, the company to the school, inspecting, challenging, Sergio suspended, retreating for two weeks, the principal coming to get him to come back? Seeking the children?
10. The issue of the computers, the promise, non-delivery, corruption issues, the expert coming, talking over the heads of the children? Sergio and the principal’s phone and his illustrating his theories?
11. Nico, the pressure from his brother, the gang this? Belonging? At school, spurned, thinking badly of himself? Attraction to Paloma? The question to Sergio? Sergio giving him the brochure, his giving it to her, her discovering the truth, yet the bonding between them, sharing, showing him the telescope? His change of heart, wanting out of the game, wanting to go to school, repairing the boat, La Paloma?
12. Paloma, maths, physics, very clever, creating the telescope, finding the mirror, using it? The magazines, hiding them, her father then discovering her notebooks, his previous talk with Sergio and condemning him for promising what he could not deliver, his change of heart?
13. Looper, her questions, Sergio mentioning philosophy, are going to the library, John Stuart Mill, reading the books, wanting to read more, the moral questions, Inspector and the discussion about abortion, contraception? His wanting answers for the test, Nico failing, Paloma and Looper and send the questions?
14. The crisis, Nico wanting out, the threat by the boss, the gun, the shooting, Nico did, the otheris dead, Lupa in fear, Paloma and her grief?
15. The final test, Paloma deciding to come, Lupa still at home, her mother promising more education when the little boy reached kindergarten? Success? Disappointments? Tragedies?
16. The final information, 2012 excellent results, and the photos of Paloma and the others?