I highly recommend that you see the movie, "Radical," that is showing here in Austin at the Galaxy Theater through December 13th. The brilliant Mexican actor, Eugenio Derbez, won this year's Festival Favorite Award at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Congratulations to director and writer Christopher Zalla who—as you can hear in this interview, got approached by Derbez, who expressed an eagerness at wanting to be cast in the film. Check out the interview. The recounting, the narrative of the making of the movie itself sounds so magical and wondrous.
It's similar to a degree to other movies described by Goldstein in his November 3, 2023 review appearing in the Los Angeles Times, but also very different in that this is a film about Mexico, addressing what life and existence meant in 2011 with the drug cartels in power and the daily experiences of horror and violence, particularly on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border in Matamoros, Tamaulipas—and within view of Elon Musk's Space X located at the state's furthest, southern tip in Boca Chica in Brownsville, Texas.
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| Christopher Zalla |
What may also distinguish it from other films in this genre is that the teacher, Sergio (played by Eugenio Derbez), expresses not knowing what he is doing. However, Sergio does know more than he realizes in that he knows what schools should not be when they fail to educate youth for liberation and opt instead—in the words of the late Brazilian educator, Paolo Friere—"to educate for domestication."
"Radical," is a word never used once in the film, sidestepping language and taking the viewer, along with his students, straight to the classroom floor. It speaks to the exquisitely combined powers of groundedness, the power of an exuberant teacher's authentic, expressive caring for his initially reluctant students.
Albeit circuitously, this birthed a de facto, curriculum and pedagogy that sparked the flame of inventiveness and curiosity by centering it in the youth themselves. His approach incited his students to learn and experience the joy of imagination and the ability to create, something often denied for both students and teachers embedded in patriarchal and paternalistic school "reform" models that are highly scripted and over-prescribed.
Such approaches, in contrast, are fully about order and control. Staffed with over-burdened teachers for little pay and precious little respect, such schools "succeed" when they break our children's spirits with mind-numbing curricula, low expectations, and high-stakes tests.
"Death by PowerPoint," is an expression I recently heard from a teacher experiencing Mike Moses' and his charter company's, Third Futures Schools, curriculum, in what used to be the Houston Independent School District. The Third Futures curriculum is already being administered locally at Méndez Middle School in Austin, Texas. I heard from someone there who a week ago told me that "It's a total school-to-prison pipeline."
Watch out, friends and community. The neoliberals took over the Houston Independent School District and are not just headed our way, but already here. Literally.
The irony is that these agendas come almost exclusively from people who themselves benefitted from a public education! Texas Education Agency (TEA) Commissioner Mike Morath himself! You can listen to him yourself here.
It's pathetic to hear Commissioner Morath absolve himself from the Houston Independent School District takeover. Feigning innocence, he is no better than the aloof, Mexican bureaucrats that Sergio confronted in the film when asking them to provide the school with computers. Spare me. Por favor!
How could we in Austin let this happen to Méndez...? Geez, what a deal for neoliberals. Our communities get disenfranchised and they profit mightily from our children's failures—as exhibited on high-stakes tests that are—and have been—handmaidens to charterization, corporatization, and privatization of public education, generally.
Not unlike Governor Abbott's plot to dismantle public education through vouchers, this parallel agenda disenfranchises our communities and is thus politically helpful to those that neither believe in, nor want, democracy, and prioritize instead, the preservation of the incumbencies of those in power.
I appreciate the film's critique of the kind of education that treats children and youth like objects as emblematic of close to 25 years of high-stakes testing, that are part of this very same system of organized failure and disempowerment. In the meantime, the private sector generates eye-popping profits. And this, with our precious public school tax dollars flowing out of the classroom into their pockets. This, despite students ultimately doing exceedingly well on the ENLACE test despite vast inequities that the film and context make clear. Cheers to Zalla for his unblinking look at life under crisis.
I found it to be gripping from beginning to end and super hard to hold back the tears at least a couple of times. I even found myself not wanting it to end because I wanted to know what happened to all the youth, as well as to engage the implicit question of educating youth toward improbable futures. I like to think that whereas there is an undeniable impact of underinvestment, that any intervention that maximizes students' potential for future achievement is worth undertaking, since learning is not just in the immediate, but life-long, as well.
I think that we should organize viewings of this film in our classrooms and communities everywhere to get us talking about the education we seek for our youth and ways to get us there.
A final comment. There really is so much joy and power in this film that I am confident that all of these youth and adult actors were profoundly impacted. Zalla, too! What a gift to the world!
Kudos to Eugenio Derbéz, Christopher Zalla, and the entire team for helping us to envision the world anew. 🧡💚🧡
Sí se puede! Yes we can!
-Angela Valenzuela
Review: ‘Radical’ uses an old syllabus but still scores highly on the inspiration scale
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Eugenio Derbez, standing, in the movie “Radical.” (Pantelion Films) |
One of the more reliable movie subgenres involves the idealistic teacher who turns around a group of underachieving, often unruly and disadvantaged students. From such earlier films as “The Blackboard Jungle,” “To Sir, With Love” and “Up the Down Staircase” to later entries including “Stand and Deliver,” “Dangerous Minds” and 2008’s Palme d’Or-winning “The Class,” who doesn’t love stories about inspiring educators who help young folks beat the odds?
The latest addition to this admirable bunch is “Radical,” a lovely and touching true-life portrait based on Joshua Davis’ 2013 Wired magazine article “A Radical Way of Unleashing a Generation of Geniuses.” The movie, anchored by a wonderful turn by Mexican superstar Eugenio Derbez, kicked off this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Festival Favorite Award.
Derbez, seen on American screens in the Oscar-winning “CODA” (in which he also notably played a teacher), stars as the real-life Sergio Juárez Correa, who in 2011 joined the teaching staff of José Urbina López Primary School in the border city of Matamoros, Mexico. (The film was shot mainly in and around San Salvador Atenco, a town outside Mexico City.)
Matamoros is a dusty, impoverished place beset by crime, corruption and apathy, all of which contribute to the state of its struggling elementary school, nicknamed “the School of Punishment,” where funding, test scores and student engagement are consistently, perhaps irrevocably low. That is until Correa — all jaunty, rules-be-damned enthusiasm — sweeps in at the start of the fall semester to teach sixth grade. He’s expecting an assist from the school’s computers but soon discovers they were stolen four years ago and never replaced.
Neither his wide-eyed students nor the rundown facility’s portly principal, Chucho (a winning Daniel Haddad), know what to make of Correa, who immediately steamrolls past traditional teaching methods, reimagines his classroom’s desks as lifeboats and launches into a rousing lesson about staying afloat, a resonant theme here.
The latest addition to this admirable bunch is “Radical,” a lovely and touching true-life portrait based on Joshua Davis’ 2013 Wired magazine article “A Radical Way of Unleashing a Generation of Geniuses.” The movie, anchored by a wonderful turn by Mexican superstar Eugenio Derbez, kicked off this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Festival Favorite Award.
Derbez, seen on American screens in the Oscar-winning “CODA” (in which he also notably played a teacher), stars as the real-life Sergio Juárez Correa, who in 2011 joined the teaching staff of José Urbina López Primary School in the border city of Matamoros, Mexico. (The film was shot mainly in and around San Salvador Atenco, a town outside Mexico City.)
Matamoros is a dusty, impoverished place beset by crime, corruption and apathy, all of which contribute to the state of its struggling elementary school, nicknamed “the School of Punishment,” where funding, test scores and student engagement are consistently, perhaps irrevocably low. That is until Correa — all jaunty, rules-be-damned enthusiasm — sweeps in at the start of the fall semester to teach sixth grade. He’s expecting an assist from the school’s computers but soon discovers they were stolen four years ago and never replaced.
Neither his wide-eyed students nor the rundown facility’s portly principal, Chucho (a winning Daniel Haddad), know what to make of Correa, who immediately steamrolls past traditional teaching methods, reimagines his classroom’s desks as lifeboats and launches into a rousing lesson about staying afloat, a resonant theme here.
There’s a learning curve, of course, but the eager kids soon find themselves on Team Correa, invigorated by his “radical” classroom stylings, intrigued by his references to such advanced topics as physics and philosophy, and encouraged by how he lets them each learn at their own pace. This includes eschewing any preparation for the standardized national exams, which Correa abhors but the school system unequivocally embraces.
It’s affecting and heartening to see Correa’s students blossom before our eyes, gaining a confidence and curiosity long suppressed by their bleak environment and the school’s stale methodology. Chucho and Correa become good friends as well, as the principal is won over by the new teacher’s creativity, commitment and elan.
Typical of these films, the story zeroes in on a handful of students, offering vivid snapshots of their home and personal lives and the intrusive effects on their schooling. First, there’s the pretty, quiet Paloma (Jennifer Trejo), a nascent math and science prodigy, who helps her ailing father (Gilberto Barraza) mine salable scrap metal from the smelly garbage dump near their makeshift home. Though her suspicious dad initially thinks Correa is filling Paloma’s young head with overly big and unattainable ideas, the teacher helps him to realize — and support — the girl’s potential. (The real Paloma broke a national record that term for her standardized test scores and later made the cover of Wired, which unironically dubbed her “The Next Steve Jobs.”)
Eugenio Derbez in the movie “Radical.”
(Pantelion Films)
Then there’s Nico (Danilo Guardiola), who begins as the class clown but goes on to appreciate his studies and inch away from the criminal activity he’s been drawn into by his older brother (Victor Estrada) and a local gang leader (Manuel Cruz Vivas). But will education alone be enough to set him on the right path?
Finally, there’s Lupe (Mia Fernanda Solis), the eldest child in a growing family, whose new love of books and philosophy may have to take a back seat to her responsibilities at home. (She and Nico are amalgamations of Correa’s other real-life students.)
Despite the story’s upward trajectory, Kenyan-born writer-director Christopher Zalla (Sundance’s 2007 Grand Jury Prize winner, “Padre Nuestro,” a.k.a. “Sangre de Mi Sangre”) lays in enough credible obstacles, including an especially heartbreaking one, to add effective tension and pathos to Correa’s and the kids’ journey.
If the script can sometimes feel a tad pro forma, the film still proves an authentically moving and involving crowd-pleaser. (Though, at a bit more than two hours, it might have benefited from some judicious trimming.)
It should also be noted that, while the real Correa was 31 when the movie takes place, Derbez, also a producer here, turned 62 in September. Regardless, the buoyant, youthful actor convincingly embodies the role (his character does drop in a sly comment about being “a little too old” to be a new father again) and makes a warm, engaging and memorable lead.
'Radical'
In Spanish, with English subtitles
Rating: PG-13, for some strong violent content, thematic material and strong language
Running time: 2 hours, 6 minutes
Playing: In limited release
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