Is it possible to be a thief and yet deeply care about the people steal from? For me, that enigma is the heart of 2019’s Bad Education, a dramatization of the largest embezzlement from a public school system to date. Note the addition of “to date”, as we’ll probably have an even bigger one at some point in the future. Such is the sad state of affairs nowadays.
Hugh Jackman stars as the superintendent of New York’s Roslyn school district. Under his leadership, the district has become the fourth-highest rated school system in the country. Students are being placed at an increasing rate in Ivy League schools.
Jackman has astonishing interpersonal skills. The kind that helps to placate the overly excitable mothers of exceptionally dense students, as well as turn every accusation against him to be something in his favor. And yet, he seems to remember every current and former student, so he seems to have an investment in these kids aside from the long con he has perpetuated against the school system.
The cracks begin to show as he steals increasing amounts and stresses over his goal of making theirs the top district in the country. We gradually learn he is a closeted gay man, with a partner of 33 years he keeps in a desirable New York apartment. He also has something on the side, with a former student he finds tending bar in Las Vegas. And here his biggest temptation we knew of until this point is his fight against the temptation of carbs.
Allison Janney plays his finance controller, literal partner-in-crime and apparently sole confidant. One of the best scenes is between them as she taunts him with her corned beef on rye while he suffers through his diet smoothie. It is the kind of natural interplay between people who have been friends for a long time.
It is her discretions that cause the first cracks in their scheme. She gave her son a district credit card in his name, which he proceeds to use in a buying spree across many home goods stores. He makes the error of taking an Ace Hardware up on their offer of free shipping, and they alert the school board when the delivery is to a residence, and one outside the district at that.
The school board initially decides to go to the police but Jackman convinces them to do so will only bring negative publicity for the school. He manages to appeal to their greed, by saying home values will be reduced. He also says the chances of their children being accepted to Ivy League schools will disappear. I felt this was one of the most honest scenes in the movie, that people would be willing to overlook a felony to ensure their good lives will continue as usual.
But the real star here is Geraldine Viswanathan as an exceptionally smart reporter on the school newspaper who starts with writing an obligatory puff piece on the high school building a skywalk. When she notices the poor condition of the school overall, she goes through the basement archives and notices not just something amiss with the bids for the project but payments for undisclosed services to mysteriously-named organizations. In the end, it is a school newspaper that breaks a story that reached every major news outlet.
The movie starts with Jackman handling a mother who makes ridiculous demands to accommodate her deeply stupid son. A rhyme of that scene occurs near the end when the mother returns, claiming the teacher deliberately made a make-up exam harder so as to humiliate the son. Jackman is at wit’s end, and his expression as the kid is unable to say the word “accelerate” is worth the price of admission alone. In his resulting tirade, Jackman chastises the mother with, “You don’t want to see us as people because it’s not convenient to you.”
I think there’s a lot of truth in that. Although nothing justifies embezzlement, it is ironic how the vast majority of people claim children should be the world’s top priority and yet teachers are paid a pittance. Bad Education feels akin to pictures like Election and I, Tonya, though this isn’t a comedy (and, unlike those two films, does not have narration). But it does share with those movies an incisive look at humanity in a way usually don’t care to evaluate.
Dir: Cory Finley
Starring Hugh Jackman, Allison Janney, Geraldine Viswanathan
Wached on blu-ray