Written by: Sara Colangelo
Starring: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Parker Sevak, Anna Baryshnikov, Rosa Salazar, Gael García Bernal
Rating: [3.5/5]
Every child in the world carries potential to some degree or another, with some having a higher ceiling than others. When a child with that heightened potential becomes apparent, it behooves those involved in their lives to assist them in maximizing. The individuals involved include parents, friends, and teachers, which The Kindergarten Teacher delves into in such a disconcerting and impactful manner.
While living a pleasant but unsatisfying life, Staten Island kindergarten teacher Lisa (Maggie Gyllenhaal) tries to find more meaning in the poetry classes she attends but cannot create anything but derivative poems. When one of her students, Jimmy (Parker Sevak) begins reciting poetry as a young boy, she deems him a prodigy that needs cultivation she determines to undertake even against the wishes of the kid’s parents.
Teachers often serve as those figures that see the incredible intellectual potential of children because they’re in the classroom with the children and can easily compare them to the other students and those of the past. Lisa sees how Jimmy can effortlessly create poems far beyond what she could ever fathom at her age, with him not even close to having a fully formed brain. Therefore, she wants to take him to the top of success, and the film then navigates the two sides of this coin and whether she’s doing this for the sake of Jimmy solely or to give her life some grander meaning.
Dissecting these motives come as a result of a fascinating character in Lisa to explore. She by no means lives a bad life as she has all the checkmarks most people would want. A loving spouse, two children, and a job where she succeeds but something continually gnaws at her where she continues to lack satisfaction with the way her life has gone. It leaves plenty to interpret but her standard life remains just that in her eyes and evidently she wants more. If she cannot be this prodigy or succeed in areas that interest her like poetry, then she at least can be the person who found and cultivated one in Jimmy. It therefore makes this entire journey she has with him a big lie where she pretends to really care what’s best for the boy but rather how she can gain a level of notoriety for doing so. This serves as an interpretation but Lisa remains a complex character and the gray lines crosses allows for plenty of other readings might see when experiencing this story.
One element that everyone can collectively share when watching this is the stress induced in every scene where Lisa begins to cross a line. The way she navigates this relationship with Jimmy and her assertion of his talent begins to become strange and obsessive to a concerning degree. There are many moments that have so much tension to them because we continue to witness how little shame she has in her beliefs about Jimmy and tries to make the decision as if he was her child. This line she straddles teeters between a Lisa that either really cares for the development of Jimmy or something much more sinister and we never get a full read on her, especially as we get deep into the third act and we see this delusion get into something quite staggering in the way she acts.
With a complex character to portray, we had a great actor in Maggie Gyllenhaal to match in and she devours this role. Gyllenhaal lives within the gray area in which this film operates and portrays Lisa with all the complications that come with her character. Quite possibly her finest work in front of the camera, as this obsessiveness and persistence in what she believes will help Jimmy continues to get more disconcerting and she remains unrelenting.
Quite uncomfortable from beginning to end in various degrees, The Kindergarten Teacher succeeds in its stated goal. The way it captures the dynamic of a teacher and parents in relation to a child allows for intriguing layers to the narrative and further displays the emboldened path Lisa will take to get what she wants. Through this film we get a fantastic performance by Maggie Gyllenhaal as she wholly captures this bit of madness that always carries a bit of sincerity and care for Jimmy, which makes this such a conflicting but impactful watch.
Films with Josh 
