In It All Starts Today, the actor brilliantly portrays Daniel, the beleaguered head teacher and would-be poet of a primary school in a small mining town. It's a tough job by all means. Tirelessly striving to do the right thing by his pupils, their parents and his own co-workers, Daniel must handle the school's recurring problems with child abuse, mindless vandalism and petty bureaucracy.
Overburdened and, one presumes, underpaid, the selfless teacher has always succeeded in rising to those tasks set before him. However, when his father falls seriously ill and the problems of the community grow increasingly horrific, the strain begins to show and Daniel grows dejected.
From the outset Daniel is painted as an inspirational (yet far from flawless) figure, reminding us of tales about similar teachers, such as The Blackboard Jungle and the more recent Dangerous Minds. The harder edges of those American features were often melted by either melodrama or mawkish sentimentality but It All Starts Today manages to find a bright light of hope while remaining realistically grounded in the grit and spit of its deprived setting.
Tavernier directs his politically aware drama with typical sensitivity, giving the classroom scenes a semi-documentary style to suit his based-on-facts script, co-written with daughter Tiffany Tavernier and schoolteacher Dominique Sampiero. Together, these three writers have crafted an intelligent, even-handed screenplay that's punctuated by Daniel's ruminative, haunted voiceovers.
This is an emotionally involving story told with tremendous conviction and interpreted with tremendously convincing performances.
Chris Wiegand
Previous films
on BBC Four
For It All Starts Today, Tavernier won an honourable mention and the coveted FIPRESCI award at the Berlin Film Festival in 1999.
