Eugenio Derbez as Sergio Juárez in Radical: A charismatic pied piper. Photo / Supplied
Eugenio Derbez as Sergio Juárez in Radical: A charismatic pied piper. Photo / Supplied
The heart-warming, true-story Mexican classroom drama Radical is the inspirational tale of Sergio Juárez (Eugenio Derbez), a teacher who moves to an impoverished, crime-ridden border town. There, he injects his own brand of optimism and good faith into a low-achieving school where even the educators have given up on thekids.
Juárez soon learns he’s up against not just the school administration but also the barriers presented by his pupils’ home lives, which include gang violence, poverty and conflicting family obligations.
The teacher astounds his tween-age students by throwing away their dry, outdated textbooks in favour of hands-on, imaginative, critical thinking, and science and maths lessons become exercises in group problem-solving. He also opens up the learning to what they want – a lesson in which he responds to bright young Lupe’s impromptu query about “philosophy” results in a fascinating discussion about utilitarianism and human choice.
As the charismatic pied piper, Derbez (CODA) makes a delightful lead, but the kids are truly extraordinary – all feel like first-timers, plucked from the streets, who eschew the over-mannered performance of Hollywood kids for touching, sometimes heartbreaking, reality.
Radical has been accused of being idealistic in tone and convenient in its plotting. But director Christopher Zalla wrote the film after reading a 2013 Wired magazine article “A Radical Way of Unleashing a Generation of Geniuses”, by Joshua Davis, and the drama adheres closely to its non-fiction origins.
Inspirational-teacher movies certainly aren’t new, but Radical’s particular context feels like the film we all need right now – whether we are teachers fighting the good fight or wider society understanding what many of our young people are up against.
Kiwi educators will be thrilled with a film demonstrating the tenets of our curriculum, and one that gave me (a teacher by day) fantastic ideas for connecting with my own rangatahi who have become disengaged from mainstream schooling.
