Approaching the Elephant

Approaching the Elephant

The documentary “Approaching the Elephant” shows Teddy McArdle Free School during a year without a curriculum or rules in Little Falls, New Jersey. Its name is taken from J.D. Salinger’s “Teddy,” which uses the old story about blind men and an elephant to illustrate drawing wrong conclusions based on partial information.

When writing about it, there’s a risk of falling into that same trap or rather tunnel with this very strange and wonderful nonfiction film. It is truly old fashioned, made like one of those ‘60s direct cinema or fly on the wall features (directed and shot mostly solo by first-time feature filmmaker Amanda Rose Wilder; edited by Robert Greene (“Actress”) ). No music, no narration, no graphs, no expert witnesses: just put you in the place and let you watch.

That “if anything” is carefully placed in the preceding sentence. Because after watching it twice now, I’m not sure if Wilder’s movie makes any single statement about free schools at all. I think it might be trying to make many statements as possible about education itself: discipline vs. none; lesson plans vs. none; set subjects vs. none; authoritarian leadership vs. letting children (even very young ones) have a voice but it does so by showing you instead of telling you what those arguments are

The film’s first half suffers from too much dithering around. It seems somewhat reluctant to settle on who its main characters are, which isn’t always a problem; but we’d like to be able to tell why we’re watching this black and white, handheld documentary about a happyish school where kids with learning or discipline problems that make them poor fits for traditional institutions get accepted and where anyone, grown-up or child, can call a meeting and talk about whatever they want and students don’t have to take a class they don’t feel like studying for.

Finally the movie narrows down its focus to the school’s founder and head teacher, Alex, and two strong-willed children: Jiovanni, a blank-faced longhair boy; and Lucy, a sunny-dispositioned blond girl.

Lucy loves roughhousing and goofing as much as any of the kids do but also likes having rules in place so you know how far is too far and someone there with you, once enough is enough has been reached. Jiovanni is an argumentative spoiled brat of a destructive streak who could not care less whether anybody else ever gets happy until his own needs are met (or thwarted). In other words he is in just the right (i.e., wrong) place.

It would appear that this school believes people need rules/laws/structure/etc., built into them at some deep level; that eventually self-interest will kick in when threatened by anything like Jio. But does it?

Every time it feels safe for one kid or another even briefly start learning something or any teacher attempt teach anything then Giovanni acts out physically making impossible until all children unite against him years later maybe because nobody wants play “bad guy” pop utopia bubble only after narcissists like him force issue by becoming hateful instead more gifted at being ignored while hated other people . “I gettin’ feeling everybody else school don’t wanna be driven by Jio’s likes,” says another boy.

I wouldn’t say that Wilder is “only watching” the battle. In my opinion, objectivity is not applicable in film making. The film was shot one or two days a week over a year and then twisted in editing to produce what looks like a story leading up to a fairly conventional (and exciting) climax.

But it does seem reasonable to claim that “Approaching the Elephant” is not moving us towards any particular idea about what’s right and wrong. If anything, it arranges the footage so as to challenge or confirm our own notions about a good education (“Is this really working?” Alex asks at one point. “We probably won’t know for 20 years”).

The final act – when the school is essentially held hostage by Jiovanni’s snotty whims made me furious. I don’t believe in corporal punishment, but boys like him test that commitment. And even though I think the modern American school system is a quasi fascistic holdover from an earlier time designed mainly to teach kids how to be obedient, voiceless cogs in an industrial economy that no longer exists parts of “Approaching the Elephant” made me wonder if free schools aren’t an equally misguided over-correction.

Reactions like mine are, I suspect, why you make this movie this way; and mine are only half of them. It’s a significant movie as movies go: intelligent, sensitive, expertly made. But it’s also significant because it can provoke thought and argument. It may look deceptively modest beside “American Sniper,” but as a Rorschach test, it plays just as many cards without having to take sides games with its subject matter; everybody who sees it will draw different pictures of elephants.

Watch Approaching the Elephant For Free On Gomovies.