Teachers give.
They give their time, their knowledge, their skill. Most give well beyond what their contracts demand. Many give the very best of themselves every day.
But at one German school, someone has been taking, too. And that has teachers on edge.
The thief is not necessarily a teacher. It might be a student. Or a custodian. But many a teacher has been victimized by this petty pilfering—sometimes school supplies, sometimes money right out of their purses or wallets. And the faculty is sick of it.
Carla Nowak understands their frustration. She even sympathizes. But when her fellow faculty members begin to nudge against students’ rights—and especially when they interrupt her class to inspect the wallets of the boys therein—she gets uneasy, and she makes her feelings clear.
“I understand your outrage,” one of Ms. Nowak’s coworkers tells her. “But you don’t know how long this has been going on. There are people who will steal all they can without rhyme or reason.”
So Ms. Nowak decides to put her own plan in motion.
She suspects a teacher might be behind the thefts—not a student. So she purposefully leaves her wallet in her jacket, leaves her jacket in the teacher’s lounge and leaves her laptop next to her belongings—the computer’s video recorder running.
Sure enough, a bit of money is gone when Ms. Nowak returns. And sure enough, her computer caught the culprit in the act. Not a face, mind you, but an arm—an arm clothed in a telltale blouse, a unique blouse in the school’s halls, as far as Ms. Nowak knows.
But is a blouse enough to convict someone of a betrayal of trust? Is it enough to even accuse someone?
And while we’re on the subject of trust, just how right—how legal—is it to record what goes on in the teacher’s lounge without permission?
Ms. Nowak lost a little money and, in return, found an incriminating video. But that video, not the thefts themselves, may be the thing that brings the school to its knees.
Did Ms. Nowak catch a crook? Maybe. But she potentially fractured a few futures, too—including her own.
We’ve all heard the cliché about where the road paved with good intentions leads. But let’s acknowledge Ms. Nowak’s good intentions. The idealistic teacher is doing her best to protect the school’s students and protect her own colleagues from being victimized. She did what she thought was right.
Also worth mentioning: Ms. Nowak appears to be a pretty good teacher. The students in her class are—at least in the movie’s opening acts—engaged and attentive. Her classroom seems well managed. She asks good questions and, as such, fields thoughtful answers. And she encourages one quiet-but-talented student to go deeper than the curriculum might require.
But the film also reminds us that rules and legal safeguards are in place for important reasons—and that violating those sometimes frustrating safeguards can lead to far greater problems down the road.
A couple of students do a presentation on Edmond Halley and his study of the solar system. One talks about how comets and eclipses were considered bad omens, and that “divine retribution was coming.” But with Halley, “The predictable became predictable.”
When Ms. Nowak asks her class what the significance of this was, one student says, “People stopped believing in God?”
“Stopped believing in God,” Ms. Nowak repeats. “You have a point.”
The teacher explains that the beginning of modern astronomy allowed people to “stop explaining the world’s phenomena with God or some higher power,” and began searching for more scientific answers.
When one student asks about whether this was when people started paying attention to Zodiac symbols, Ms. Nowak clarifies that he’s thinking about astrology, not astronomy.
One student, Ali, is suspected of stealing money. His parents are obviously of Middle Eastern descent and likely (judging from the students’ name) Muslim. Both of Ali’s parents and Ms. Nowak seem to suspect that racial and/or religious discrimination might play a role in Ali being singled out.
None.
A student smashes a mostly glass door and hits a teacher in the face with a computer. (We see the results on the teacher’s face for some time after.) A kid commits a hard foul during a gym class basketball game. Another student pushes a peer during a gym exercise, leading to a fight that Ms. Nowak has to break up. Students throw chairs, slam down papers and sometimes act quite belligerently.
When a troubled student unexpectedly shows up to class, a fellow pupil jokingly suggests that he’s there to shoot up the school (pantomiming the act of gunning people down).
When Ali is accused of stealing money, his parents are brought in to discuss the matter. “My son doesn’t steal, ever,” Ali’s father says. “If he did, I’d break his legs.”
The Teacher’s Lounge is a German-language film. We see in the subtitles that the f-word is used once, and a couple of other vulgarities (“a–” and “crap”) are also used, as well as the euphemism “Jeez.” Students use obscene hand gestures.
Ms. Nowak catches a few students outside with an incriminating lighter. When she asks if they were smoking, one jokes that he was using it to “cook heroin.” (Ms. Nowak threatens to call all their parents; when the owner of the lighter begs that she not, Ms. Nowak agrees and tells him he can pick up the lighter at the end of the day.)
The Teacher’s Lounge is predicated on stealing—a problem that seems like it’s been a problem at the school for a while now. Obviously, the film doesn’t condone stealing, but we do hear about it a lot, and we actually see a couple of instances of it.
But this drama is about a lot of other squishier moral issues, too. Kids are forced to turn over their wallets, and anyone who is deemed to have too much money in them is immediately thrown under suspicion. (Even if they’re cleared of wrongdoing, children—being children—are inclined to still mock and bully kids who were accused.) The issue of secret surveillance creates a gargantuan amount of faculty friction and legal drama. Teachers and administrators are forced to carefully weigh and parse their words—walking an impossible line between explaining the situation while protecting individuals and the school legally.
Ultimately, the drama about the theft and video leads to almost outright rebellion among Ms. Nowak’s students, sparking disrespectful behavior and abuse. Classmates treat each other increasingly horribly, too. One child ignores punishments meted out in order to wreak more havoc, and school property is destroyed.
We see also other bad behavior at school unrelated to the drama at hand. One child cheats and denies it. A few others sneak out of class. Kids and adults lie.
[Spoiler Warning] The most tragic element of The Teacher’s Lounge is the impact it has on Oskar, son of the woman whom Ms. Nowak accuses of stealing. Oskar is bright and attentive; Ms. Nowak sees the boy’s talent, likes him a lot and tries to encourage him to stretch his abilities even further. But in the conflict, the boy shows a great deal of loyalty to his mother—growing more antagonistic and ultimately belligerent with each passing day. It’s a tragic parable of unintended consequences: Of all the characters hurt throughout the film, Oskar is the one who seems most in danger of irreparable damage.
It feels strange to classify The Teacher’s Lounge—a small-scope story that accurately, even tediously, reflects workplace melodrama—as a taut, edge-of-your-seat thriller. But that’s what this German-language film accomplishes. No, there’s not a single spy or assassin here. No globe-trotting changes of scenery. The camera rarely leaves the school at all, and the only act of espionage is Ms. Nowak’s laptop video.
But day by day, scene by scene, the tension ratchets upward. Sure, the world’s fate doesn’t hang in the balance. And yet, we can feel with the characters here how important the stakes are: the credibility of a mother. The future of a son. The career of a schoolteacher. Its villains are victims, its victims are villains.
We probably have all felt similar wheels at work in our own lives: One well-meaning but ill-placed act sets a series of unintended consequences in motion. Each wrong step leads further off course. Accusations are hurled that can’t be unsaid. Enemies are made that can’t be reconciled. And try as we might, it can seem impossible to get back on track.
All that makes The Teacher’s Lounge a gripping, difficult watch—despite almost the complete absence of problematic content.
The Teacher’s Lounge has a few, mostly mild acts of violence that seem shocking in the moment. It features moments of wince-worthy tension that, separated from the story, would feel quite benign. The movie’s lone (subtitled) f-word earns the film its PG-13 rating.
Even if you took out that harsh profanity, this film isn’t for kids. Sensitive kids will be bothered by what they see. Clever ones might get ideas on how to game the system.
No, The Teacher’s Lounge is about how one well-intentioned act can push a tiny, school-based civilization to the brink. And that makes for a deeply compelling film for adults, and fans of quiet, intense cinematic drama.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
