In this story of transgression and loss, Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Lisa, a dedicated, kindly teacher of 5 year olds. She yearns for creative expression and attends a poetry evening class but is frustrated with her writing. One of the children in her class, Jimmy, begins to pace back and forth across the classroom speaking lines whilst in an apparent trance, as though he is channelling words of an experienced wisdom beyond his years. His poetic nature excites her as he speaks from feeling rather than from thinking, or over thinking, as she does with her own attempts at poetry.
Lisa fixates on his words, racing to scribble down every utterance, to capture his lines before they are lost forever. However, it is troubling that, at her evening class, she presents one of his poems as her own work. It is well received, and she repeats this theft of creative copyright and intellectual property the following week. The film suggests that her own latent talent was crushed by the everyday, making her into a teacher instead of an artist, so she appears to desire what she may have lost herself.
Lisa is desperate for unmothered Jimmy’s poetry to flourish but his practical businessman father does not share her passion, and he cannot provide an environment for Jimmy’s creativity to thrive. Driven by her hunger for beauty and fears his poems will disappear, she is compelled to groom him.
This is a moving film about nurture and creativity, where it is gifted, and how it should be nourished, and the power plays between teacher and student. Therefore, the director's requirement for Ms Gyllenhaal to reveal her breasts several times is either deliberate, in order to demonstrate the director's power over the actress, or simply an irrelevant distraction which conforms to a filmic expectation of female nudity.
It is unsettling to observe the teacher, and protector, and nurturer of young talent, cross the line of acceptable behaviour so often that it causes concern even while we know how easily adults with power and authority can exploit minors. It is uncomfortable to watch Lisa wake Jimmy from ‘nap time’ several times and remove him from the classroom, to try to draw poetry out of him and further stimulate his creativity. One particularly troubling scene is when she takes him into the toilets, trying to elicit from him different perspectives of the everyday. The need for secrecy, or private intimacy in these talks is not explained, other than her fervent obsession for his gift, but his poetry cannot be forced by her ardour; it flows through him, arriving from his own emotions. He goes with her because she is his teacher, and he does not disobey or refuse.
Lisa’s poetry teacher also crosses the line, firstly in his excitement at her apparent talent, and secondly when he discovers her fraud and is cruel in his condemnation. This crisis opens her own wound, which is either the lack of true artistry, or the terrible early loss of it, that impels her final, rash action.
She is partly redeemed by putting Jimmy on stage to recite his own work, thus acknowledging that it is not her own, but the very act of taking him to the poetry club is unethical. She does worse later. Although tiny, and quiet, Jimmy is not as vulnerable as we may assume; he demonstrates a self-possession on stage and later proves he has agency. He acts for himself, and the last line of the film reveals the tragedy.
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