Review by John P. Harvey.
In a neglected Mexican border town in which crime is ever present, the primary school’s computer lab has been stripped bare, its library has almost no books, and corruption ensures that the school will never receive replacement supplies. Little wonder, then, that the school’s students are unmotivated and have done poorly in national testing.
Into this hopelessness steps the sixth class’s new teacher, Sergio (Eugenio Derbez), recently moved to the town, with ideas that nobody has heard of. When his students arrive in the morning of his first day as their teacher, he has ignored the school assembly in order to transform their desks into lifeboats. It’s a maths lesson, a philosophy lesson, and the students’ introduction to learning under their own steam.
Perceiving that the students will come to believe in themselves by learning to think, discover, and solve, Sergio sets out to encourage them to decide what they want to learn and when and how, on the basis of their own curiosity. But there’s a lot of inertia to overcome: other teachers and his students themselves expect mediocrity at best. As well, Sergio’s approach suggests an attack on teaching as it has always been — and the present methods are tried and true, aren’t they?
And when he asks pointed questions of the district school administrator about undelivered replacement computers, he really kicks the hornets’ nest.
Radical explores what actually happened when somebody ran with a revolutionary educational philosophy whose time had long come. As an essentially true story, Radical offers several students’ perspectives as well as Sergio’s own on the surprises that opened up through his refusal to treat students as cogs in an industrial machine and his insistence that every student has all that is necessary to his or her success: potential. But, at least as much as it concerns educational style, the film concerns human nature and social boundaries: what it may take for a relatively powerless child in a poorly equipped school to shuck the weight of nearly universal expectations of ineptitude and failure.
Amazingly true-to-life performances by the child leads as well as the adults bringing its most difficult moments to life, Radical plays out a success story to serve as inspiration for anybody who cares about the opportunities for children to engage in directing their own lives. With intimate camera work and meticulous attention to sound quality, this quiet but well-paced drama enables viewer insight into the experiences of its leads and lavishes on us a new sense of the possible.