Radical

Film Notes

“Radical,” a Spanish-language movie from Mexico, is based on the true story of an innovative and inspiring teacher in a poor community. Chucho (Daniel Haddad) runs an elementary school in a very poor community with corrupt officials and constant violence from gangs of drug dealers. Sergio (Eugenio Derbez) is the new teacher, brought on at the last minute when a faculty member quit just a day before school started. One of the other teachers scoffs that the only requirement for the faculty is a pulse. 

Chucho has all but given up on giving the children a meaningful education because the students walk past yellow crime scene tape and murdered bodies on the way to school, the library’s encyclopedia is 30 years old, and the computer lab has been out of service for four years. Most students drop out after sixth grade to help their families or to join gangs. The bored students suffer through lectures, memorization, and busy work.

The school is often derisively referred to as “a place of punishment.” As the students line up in their uniforms for the first day of school, Chucho barks at them, “Silence is the foundation of obedience; obedience is the foundation of discipline, and discipline is the foundation of learning.” He has no interest in challenging established procedures or authorities. If the funding for the computer lab somehow disappeared and the teachers get early copies of the standardized tests so they can be sure to get bonuses when the students memorize the answers, all he can say to Sergio is, “No one gives a damn what happens here … don’t kick the hornets’ nest.” 

Sergio Juárez Correa’s work at the José Urbina López Primary School in Matamoros, Mexico, was the subject of a 2013 Wired Magazine article titled, A Radical Way of Unleashing a Generation of Geniuses. One of the students was on the cover with the headline, “The Next Steve Jobs?” Correa was inspired by the ideas of Sugata Mitra, a British professor of educational technology, who proposed student-led learning, an updated, computer-enabled version of the ideas popularized in the 1960s by Summerhill founder A.S. Neill. “What do you want to learn?” Sergio (as he insists the students refer to him) asks. He encourages them not to worry about grades and not to be afraid of mistakes. “Who wants to be wrong first?”

When they first come to his classroom, the students pause at the door because he has turned the desks upside down and piled them in groups. He calls out to them that they are underwater, the desks are boats, and the students will drown if they cannot climb on board. But if there are too many people in a boat, it will sink. How can they determine the right number in each boat to save the most people? This makes the students want to learn about flotation, which means math and physics. It leads one student to ponder how we decide who to save when there is not enough room. Sergio tells her she is a philosopher, like John Stuart Mill. Another student, Paloma (Jennifer Trejo), becomes interested in math and astronomy. Sergio tells her she could be an aerospace engineer. Soon, Sergio has the students out on the playground, each a planet orbiting and spinning.

Derbez, always a charismatic screen presence, is at his best interacting with young people, as he did playing the music teacher in “Coda” and the quirky doctor in “Miracles from Heaven.” The young actors are exceptionally expressive, particularly Jennifer Trejo as Paloma, the WIRED cover model, a gifted young mathematician who lives with her father next to the garbage dump they glean to support themselves; Mia Fernanda Solis as Lupe, who goes to the college library to check out philosophy books but is forced to drop out of school to care for her baby brother; and Danilo Guardiola as Nico, whose brother has involved him in drug smuggling but who has begun to wish for a life of learning—and a closer relationship with Paloma. 

Sergio wants to challenge the school’s systems, but most of all, he wants to challenge his sixth graders. He knows that what matters more than memorizing facts is to make them want to learn, to teach them how to learn, and to show them how capable and curious they can be. He does that for Chucho as well.

One of the movie’s most meaningful moments is when the two men sit down for a quiet talk. As Sergio and Chucho share the names of the teachers who inspired them, we see Chucho begin to reconnect with what led him to become an educator. If we are lucky, we have at least one teacher in our past who showed us what we are capable of. If not, Sergio can help remind us that it is never too late. 

Nell Minow, Roger Ebert.com., November 1, 2023

‘Radical’ Review: Conventional Tearjerker About an Inspiring Teacher Benefits From a Terrific Ensemble.

Fresh off 'CODA,' Eugenio Derbez plays another idealistic educator attempting to unlock overlooked students' potential, this time at a dysfunctional Mexican elementary school.

Idealistic teachers propel some of the most shamelessly schmaltzy tearjerkers of cinema, but whether we like it or not, we all respond to them at some sincere, emotional level. Christopher Zalla’s resolute crowdpleaser “Radical” is a heart-tugger in the mold of such old-school “inspiring teacher changes everything” tales as “To Sir With Love,” “Dead Poets Society” and even recent Oscar winner “CODA,” with which it shares star Eugenio Derbez. It’s a conventional film with broad audience appeal — watch it without tissues at your own risk — and hits all the expected notes.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing for a film centered on time-honored themes. Based on a true story, Zalla’s script is inspired by a decade-old WIRED article titled “A Radical Way of Unleashing a Generation of Geniuses” — the writer of which, Joshua Davis, serves as a producer here. In the piece, Davis zeroed in on a forgotten elementary school across the U.S. border in Matamoros, Mexico, detailing a persistent teacher’s innovative means of unlocking his students’ previously overlooked potential.

Aware of the story’s cinematic pull, Zalla — previously a Sundance 2007 winner for the grittily captivating “Sangre de Mi Sangre” — doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel, relying on a failsafe, often brazenly sentimental formula. Predictably, there are plenty of rousing moments, covering joy, heartbreak, failure and triumph, throughout this overlong film. But Zalla doesn’t shy away from a necessary dose of realism across the region’s majestic beaches and unattended dirt roads. “Radical” isn’t so much an irresponsibly magical against-the-odds yarn as a truthful one, in which a well-intentioned outsider can only go so far in protecting underprivileged students from certain grim paths.

Fresh off the aforementioned “CODA,” in which he played an endearing (if somewhat inauthentic) music teacher, the charming Derbez again portrays an educator with big ambitions, this time reaching for a wider range of emotions. We learn that his desperately clueless character, Sergio Juárez, had raised his own hand to teach at the José Urbina López Primary School, a derelict institution known as “a place of punishment” where others are sent if they fail elsewhere, or perhaps anger the wrong sort within the corrupt system. Having stumbled upon the method of British educational technology professor Sugata Mitra online, Sergio thinks that he can make a difference in the lives of these neglected students by teaching them how to think through complex ideas, all with the help of the computers that he believes the school has.

Run by the lovably grumpy principal Chucho (Daniel Haddad) — Sergio’s fiercest skeptic who gradually, of course, turns into his closest friend — the barely operational school has no such technology. What it has instead is heaps of promise through a vibrant array of pupils. Among them are scrappy Niko (Danilo Guardiola), thoughtful Lupe (Mía Fernanda Solis) and brainy, astronomy-obsessed Paloma (Jennifer Trejo) as the chief players. Many of the students in the film are said to be composites of real-life figures, with Paloma (deemed “the next Steve Jobs” on the cover that WIRED issue) perhaps one of the exceptions. Living by a dumpster with her sickly dad who scavenges scrap materials for a living, Paloma is quickly discovered by Sergio as a certified math genius and steadily grows into her potential as someone gifted enough to build her own telescope.

While Paloma clashes with her initially unsupportive father, Lupe and Niko have it even harder. With another baby on the way, the former’s family demands she stay at home to lend a hand, while the latter has long been mixed up with the locale’s merciless hoodlums. Still, Niko tries to sever ties with the thugs he works for in order to focus on his studies (and his adorable crush on Paloma), doing his best to avoid a fate lurking insidiously in the distance.

Along with DP Mateo Londoño and production designer Juan Santiso, Zalla presents Matamoros with unforgiving precision and occasionally, a touch of sweet hopefulness. “Radical” captures both the poverty and helplessness of a sweltering region that sees frequent killings and drug-related crime, and the modernity that exists on the other side of its tracks. Zalla also unearths pockets of bliss and humor in the kids’ everyday lives across numerous non-traditional classes with Sergio, who ruffles some feathers in the system as he puts his students’ wellbeing above all else.

By Tomris Laffly, Variety, Jan 19, 2023.