After waiting for years to finally see it, I finally got around to seeing Frederick Wiseman's High School. I remember my high school history teacher Mr. Johnson showing clips of this film to us in class since the actual high school was only a few dozen miles away in Philadelphia. The footage he showed shocked me then and it shocks me now. It's fascinating to watch how authoritarian schools in the Vietnam era were: the adult hall monitors marching through the halls looking for people to scream at; the visiting gynecologist giving sex ed who brag about sticking his fingers in women "for a living"; the home economics teacher body shaming young girls showing off their custom made clothes; the tyrannical "guidance counselor" more concerned with maintaining authority than in actually helping the students. And, of course, the coup de grace: the reading at a school assembly of a letter from a graduated student killed overseas in the military thanking the school for making him the man he was. Chilling, necessary stuff. Also, I love how the camera naturally wanders and zooms in on random stuff. It's like the camera is replicating a wandering eye grown tired and bored.
8/10
No comments:
Post a Comment