School Daze: Movie Review of Steve
★★★1/2
Illustration by Michael DiMilo
By Geoff Carter
The film industry has always been fascinated with the classroom. There is a long history of school-based movies going all the way back to Blackboard Jungle, Up the Down Staircase, and To Sir, With Love and extending to more recent offerings like Lean on Me, Stand and Deliver, and Dead Poets’ Society. Some are inspirational, like Mr. Holland’s Opusor Freedom Writers. Others, like Blackboard Jungle or Lean on Me depict the harsh realities of the classroom. The Substitute is an action film. The Faculty is a horror movie in which teachers (to the delight of students everywhere) become monsters. Then there are comedies like Back to School, Summer School, and Bad Education. And then there are the dozens upon dozens of documentaries. The list could go on and on.
There have also been a handful of teacher films that deal with the psychological and emotional toll of teaching like The Teachers’ Lounge or Detachment. And now there is Steve.
Set in Stanton Wood, an alternative school for troubled young men, the film follows Steve (Cillian Murphy), the headteacher and administrator of the severely understaffed and underfunded school, for a twenty-four-hour period packed with trauma, disappointment, disillusionment, and pain. Along with staff members Amanda (Tracey Ullman), Owen, (Youseff Kerkour), Shola (Simbi Ajikawo), and part-time school psychologist Jenny, Steve tries to keep a lid on the chaos.
The students are angry, aggressive, sometimes violent, but Steve and the staff focus on their positive qualities. His favorite student is Shy (Jay Lycurgo), a sensitive, intelligent, and funny young man who cannot fit into a regular school environment, much like all the boys there. Yet Steve and his staff love their kids. Ever patient, sympathetic, resourceful, and kind, Steve seems deficient only in his refusal to let his students down. While this may sound noble and pure—and to a degree it is—it may not be purely altruistic; Steve may have other darker motives. In any case, the emotional and psychological toll it takes on him is daunting.
As the film opens, Steve arrives at Stanton Wood aa film crew is preparing to shoot a documentary about the school. The students become all hyped up at the sight of the cameras and act up, adding to the stress of the day. Steve breaks up a fight, handles a distraught teacher, and gets set to meet with the school patrons. When an MP arrives to inspect the school, he is dissed by one of the students and leaves in a huff. The meeting with the patrons goes badly. Steve learns the school will soon be shut down.
We discover Steve is a closet drinker and uses some sort of drug he hides in the laundry. To say he is jittery is an understatement. He is constantly distracted by the kids, the staff, administrative needs, and the documentary crew.
While the classroom chaos is unremittingly intense, that is not the point of this movie. The chaos is a given. The film is a reflection of the psychological clamor going on in each of the students’—and Steve’s head—a never-ending internal cacophony of stress, anger, and fear. Every moment is filled with a crisis or an upheaval—to the point where the reality seems stretched and surreal.
Director Tim Mielants underlines the unreality—perhaps the surreality—of the situation through a combination of spinning traveling shots, overhead drone shots, and surreal reversals of space. In one scene, Steve is lying on the floor watching from the laundry room floor as the room slowly spins and he finds himself staring up at a pool of water.
While this depiction of Steve’s inner turmoil is externalized in the twisted and bent reality of the film’s frenetic pacing and unique shooting style, footage from the documentary crew grounds the staff and students into a more traditional reality. As they are asked about the school and themselves—trite questions like “What three words describe you?”—we get insightful glimpses into the minds of both the troubled kids and the staff. It is a reality that is outside Steve’s head and one which reflects a truer reality. When Amanda says the boys are troubling, disturbing, violent, and irascible, but that she adores each and every one of them, it rings true.
Cillian Murphy’s portrayal of Steve is nothing short of brilliant. He is a ball of nervous energy, mostly internalized, but presents nothing but a calm, patient, and sympathetic front to his students, but he is no pushover. After breaking up a fight between two of the boys, he sternly tells one that if he threatens a staff member again, he will be out. When the stressors—including the fate of the school itself—multiply, Steve seems to fold into himself. Murphy does a marvelous job of portraying a wonderfully sensitive and giving man at the end of his rope.
Later in the film, when he is confronted by Amanda, she makes allusions to fact that the school’s mishaps are not his fault, a fact he cannot seem to acknowledge. She also mentions the death of a young girl, implying this may be a skeleton in Steve’s closet. It’s easy to see Steve is consumed with guilt and that perhaps his devotion to the school and the kids is sort of an attempt at self-redemption, or penance.
One of the brilliant points of Murphy’s performance is that as soon as this piece of his past is revealed, it seems surprising we never noticed it before, that it was always in the character’s makeup. His torment is underlined when he returns home after his hellish day to an atmosphere in stark contrast to his work life—it is the difference between heaven and a hell of his own making.
The supporting cast is also excellent. Ullman is outstanding as Amanda, Kerfour and Ajikawo are also excellent as the staff. Watson is incisive yet stern with her handling of the boys, who, as a group, hit the perfect tone of defiance, rage, vulnerability, and camaraderie. Lycurgo in particular is stunningly on the mark as Shy.
In the vast pantheon of films about school and education, Steve focuses not so much on the broader social or cultural implications of education as it does on the personal toll of nurturing and caring for the less fortunate children among us. Whether Steve is driven by his conscience, his demons, his empathy, or his sense of civic duty is irrelevant. What does matter is his complete and utter determination, his obsession with his students. However, by focusing on the titular character, the director can offer us only a tunnel-visioned view of the world that is the semi-controlled chaos of Stanton Wood.
As a former teacher working in at-risk schools myself, I have seen the effects of these stressors on educators and the problems our youth is facing. While Steve may not be a clear-eyed examination of these problems, is is a sterling examination of the impact of a crippled educational system has on the people who try to work within it.
Steve focuses on the inner life of a teacher, and it’s not necessarily a pretty thing, but it is a revelation about the selflessness and nobility of our educators. While at times the narrative and cinematic tricks become distracting, this is still a film well worth seeing, if nothing else than for Cillian Murphy’s bravura performance. It’s an education.