The Teacher’s Lounge
In “The Teacher’s Lounge,” we are given a glimpse of political rebellion, and how it can unravel a society, in the context of a middle school in Germany. We get distrust in immigrants, damning accusations of crimes, and the aftermath of what can happen when a community- in this case, a classroom- distrusts the person they are supposed to be led by. It’s a riveting dramatization of life that is exaggerated for melodrama, but also real in the anxieties it invokes.
At the center of the story is Carla Nowak (played beautifully by Leonie Benesch), a teacher devoted to helping her students. One day, administrators come into her classroom and ask the girls to leave, and the boys to leave their wallets on their desks, and go to the front; someone has stolen money from a teacher. One of the boys, Ali, has an inordinate amount of money in his wallet, and the administrators are suspicious, but even when his parents explain why, the suspicions never really subside, and the administrators- only able to see situations in black-and-white- never fully make things right. This leads Carla to have a hidden camera in the teacher’s lounge, and when she sees someone steal money from her, it leads down a rabbit hole of accusations and distrust that snowballs into chaos for students and administrators alike, with Carla unable to control the situation, or her students.
Carla is an admirable teacher; it’s clear that she has empathy for her students and doesn’t want them to suffer. This is constant throughout the film, even after she is disrespected by one who is the son of a colleague accused of stealing through Carla’s surveillance, and an interview with the school paper goes sideways. Benesch does a wonderful job navigating the anxieties and changing emotions of the story while maintaining this fundamental truth for Carla. Some of the best moments in Ilker Çatak’s terrific thriller involve her trying to show compassion in the face of challenges from other administrators and teachers, and from the students themselves. The film juggles all of these pressures and moments with great suspense, anchored by Benesch’s performance, who is not off the hook with her behavior. What she has done, and how she did it, is something that requires close scrutiny, but she’s also shown little compassion herself, and it was for a worthy pursuit- the pursuit of truth. For most people, it would have been about power, and malicious means. That’s not who she is. Some of her other colleagues are not as noble in their intent.
