By Douglas Wood
Rated R
Currently streaming on Amazon Prime and Netflix
What inspires poetry? For Maggie Gyllenhaal’s titular character in the eerie and unsettling The Kindergarten Teacher, the point of view is key. To illustrate this to her artistically gifted five-year-old student, Jimmy (Parker Sevak), she gets down on her hands and knees in a school bathroom and begins meowing. This is what the world looks like to a cat, she tells the boy. “Can I go back to naptime now?” he responds.
Like Jimmy, viewers are put in the position of assessing whether or not the Staten Island teacher, Lisa Spinelli, is ok. Sara Colangelo, the writer-director of this American remake of the dark Israeli psychological drama, seems to be saying she’s not. But there’s also evidence she is. It takes a highly gifted actor like Gyllenhaal to keep us guessing—at times, Lisa is likeable and maternal, at others, she’s a forty-something woman coming undone, unraveling before our eyes.
Gyllenhaal’s mesmerizing, enigmatic performance takes us into cringe-inducing territory and back again, often posing questions that don’t have answers. If you’re a viewer who likes filling in blanks and arguing with friends after the movie’s over, The Kindergarten Teacher will invigorate you; if not, it might prove a bit challenging.
What’s clear is that Lisa believes her young student has an almost supernatural ability to create poetry that seems to arise from a dreamy state of consciousness, using sophisticated vocabulary and phrasing as a talented adult would. After witnessing Jimmy’s spontaneous recitation of a delicate haiku, Lisa insists to Jimmy’s babysitter, Becca (Rosa Salazar), that this gift be nurtured, not squandered. She instructs Becca to write down his poetry when it arises.
Later, she tracks down Jimmy’s single dad, Nikhil (Ajay Naidu), at his nightclub, to convince him of his son’s preternatural gift. Nikhil isn’t interested—he wants Jimmy to have a “normal” life, plus he doesn’t have the time or inclination to ensure his son’s remarkable poems are heard. Lisa proposes that Becca be fired so that she herself can become the boy’s part-time guardian and mentor. She believes it’s up to her to bring this modern-day Mozart to the world’s attention. Nikhil reluctantly consents.
Lisa brings Jimmy to a nighttime poetry club hosted by her professor, the flirty Simon, played with seductive charm by Gael Garcia Bernal. She has the boy recite one of his poems, which Simon recognizes as one that Lisa had presented as her own in class. Colangelo is (intentionally?) vague here—if Lisa is hoodwinking her classmates and teacher into thinking Jimmy’s work is her own, why does she abandon this idea so readily and instead concentrate on promoting Jimmy’s work? Lisa’s motivation isn’t entirely clear, but perhaps that’s the point—she’s floundering, grasping for meaning in her life wherever she can find it. Simon casts Lisa off, but not before letting her know her own work is derivative, uninspired and pales in comparison to Jimmy’s accomplished poems. She’s not an artist, he tells her, only an art appreciator.
At home, Lisa’s husband and teenage children show a lack of enthusiasm for her work. She tells them, condescendingly, that she wishes there were a little bit more curiosity, vibrancy and intellectualism in the house. “What are you,” her son asks— “the cultural ambassador to the UN?” When Lisa suggests her daughter, Brittany, rekindle her love of photography, Brittany gets defensive: “I post cool stuff on Instagram all the time.”
Colangelo and Gyllenhaal are fearless in creating such an off-putting protagonist. Gyllenhaal is in every scene of the film, and with a character this brittle and dogmatic, there’s the risk of losing viewers’ sympathy. But like other highly flawed or obsessed characters in film and TV (think Tony Soprano), her inner life is so intriguing that we’re invested in her journey, wherever it’s headed. Lisa is seeking something real in a world she feels is becoming phony, and while we may want to recoil from her questionable actions, we can’t turn away.
The Kindergarten Teacher isn’t exactly a thriller, though it has elements of one, including a score that’s occasionally discordant (as if commenting on Lisa’s aberrant psyche), and a suspenseful climax. It’s more of a creepy character study—a macabre portrait of a desperate contemporary woman struggling with her unfulfilled dreams. Jimmy is an end to a means and the filmmakers wisely minimize his dialogue and presence in the film; because of this, he becomes symbolic– a panacea for Lisa’s demons, a purpose for living.
As arthouse pictures go, this one is as straightforward as its title. The director favors realism over stylization; the narrative is linear and chronological. You can sense Colangelo’s resistance to turn the material into campy melodrama or Grand Guignol, and thank God for that. With such a precious actor as Gyllenhaal at its center, she sees no need for histrionics, cathartic monologues or twisty plot devices. It’s almost as if Colangelo is heeding the advice of Lisa, her own protagonist: “Talent is so fragile and so rare and our culture does everything to crush it.”