As a former teacher I figured that I would probably relate to the protagonist's plight in The Forest for the Trees (Der Wald vor lauter Bäumen)--a 2005 special jury prize winner at Sundance, advertised as depicting an idealistic young teacher getting beat down by the job. German writer/director Maren Ade undoubtedly drew upon her parents (both educators) to flesh out the narrative as well as provide access to their school for location shooting, so much of the film seems well grounded in reality. The students certainly come across as real--non-actors that were told to be themselves or act just like the unruly youth who populate actual classrooms, and not the mythological creatures dreamed up by ivory tower dwelling University professors, who must have fashioned their Education doctorates in Disneyland.

Hired midway through the term to teach biology (grades 5-12), Melanie Pröschle (Eva Loebau) nervously anticipates her first teaching position as she relocates to a new city. To furnish her new apartment, she frets about whether to purchase a yellow or purple pot for her houseplant (though it's probably a ploy to get the shopkeeper to engage in conversation). Melanie soon establishes her loneliness--in spades. Re-locating to a new city, she knows no one yet desperately seeks companionship.

Although fellow teacher Thorsten Rehm (Jan Neumann) demonstrates keen interest to date her, she consistently puts him off. Whether this is due to her shyness, her fears of men, her suspicions of his motives, her problems with relationships, or possible sexuality issues is ambiguously left open for post mortem discussion. That presents no problem for a film like this, but her obsessive possessiveness for her neighbor Tina (Daniela Holtz) makes Melanie's character a real challenge for the audience. Turning into a virtual stalker, she constantly throws herself at Tina and evidences such dishonesty and social ineptitude that it's difficult to hold back from groaning or giving yourself a dope slap over her clumsy actions.

Melanie's inadequacies don't fool her students either. Although we're to assume that she's an idealist, fresh out of school and armed with the latest educational theory and practices, Melanie brings absolutely nothing to the classroom. She's so scared of her students that she can't even stand up to one fifth grader who hurls a chocolate milk carton at her new dress suit. If her idea for bringing a "ray of sunshine"; and re-energizing the school is to let students trample all over her and create continual chaos, then she succeeds.

But her ineptitude encompasses all facets of her life--especially illustrated with her awkward attempts at friendship. The filmmaker also parallels her descent with her home furnishings--rapidly deteriorating as Melanie discovers her co-workers recognize her incompetence and her classroom sinks into hopelessness. She's so weak that she can't even get petting zoo ponies to cooperate for some choice grain. Frankly, it's difficult to imagine how such an insecure being could last a week in the classroom--and that's what presents some major difficulties for the film.

There ARE similar inept teachers that have been unwisely hired and unleashed on students, but just how to make a movie about them and expect the audience to stay with them is a huge challenge. Losers are a tough lot to sympathize with unless you can find redemptive strength somewhere. One example that comes to mind is Teachers, but that follows a far stronger Nick Nolte while simultaneously illustrating weak teacher links like "Ditto"--a teacher so dull that his students don't even notice that he dies during a lesson. I've seen teachers like "Ditto" during my 25+ year former career, but they survived by finding a way to enforce order and quiet in the classroom (and didn't give a crap about actual learning). And I've seen a few beginning teachers that were as scared of their students as Melanie, but I can't remember any of them lasting more than one contract year.

Such ineptitude does deserve its 81 minutes on celluloid, as The Forest for the Trees offers a character study of a woman on the verge of a nervous meltdown. Armchair psychologists can clearly recognize how badly the protagonist needs therapy, especially when she tosses aside any possible redemption by rejecting Thorsten's empathetic attempts at friendship--the most disturbing occurring when she cuts him off from sharing his own horrid stories about his first year teaching.

The film has definite educational value for teachers in training, mostly because it depicts realistically drawn modern students and clearly demonstrates that a teacher had best have his/her personal act together before ever facing a hostile classroom. Those kids have the world's greatest B.S. detectors, and they will chew up the unsure and the pretenders without mercy. Similarly, film audiences will cringe at the worst patches of the uneven film, mostly at the ludicrous ending that is an overused and lazy cliché among neophyte writers/directors--only demonstrating that the filmmaker really wasn't sure how to finish the project. Unfortunately, such finales impart an indelible image that audiences tend to dwell on, obscuring more noteworthy scenes. Still, Ade's first feature indicates that she is a filmmaker that we should continue to track.