Back To School: Five Films Worth Getting Detention For

September is upon us. The shops are full of novelty pencil cases. Parents everywhere are remembering they were supposed to buy new school shoes, and children are about to discover that six weeks is just long enough to forget everything they learned last term. It’s back to school time.

Cinema has a complicated relationship with education. On screen, schools are places to fall in love, overthrow authority, form bands, discover telekinetic powers, commit light to moderate acts of rebellion and, occasionally, receive an education.

In honour of the new school year, we asked the Flatpack team to rummage around in their cinematic backpacks and pick some of their favourite films about schools, teachers and the general horror of having to be somewhere by 8:30am.

The Breakfast Club (1985) - Amy's pick

I love The Breakfast Club because beneath the enormous 80s hair, questionable parenting and Judd Nelson being Judd Nelson, it understands something surprisingly enduring about being a teenager: everyone is performing a version of themselves. The popular girl isn't just popular. The weird girl isn't just weird. The jock isn't just a jock. They're all much messier than the labels they've been given and, crucially, much more alike than they think.

Is it dated? Absolutely. Does the makeover of Ally Sheedy remain a cinematic crime? Obviously. But 40 years later, that final fist in the air still gets me.

Rushmore (1998) - Ian's pick

Scholarship student Max is hopelessly in love with Rushmore Academy. He is smashing it on the extracurricular front, but his grades are appalling. Then he meets former student Herman Blume after a blistering guest talk. (‘Take dead aim on the rich boys.’)

I took my kids to see Rushmore at Whatever Pays the Rent's 90 Minute Movie Club last year. We had watched it a lot when they were young, and I annoyed them by muttering the dialogue throughout. It’s a rare American film about class, but what really hit me this time is how creativity can help us to navigate the insanity of school. It took me back to a long afternoon making sports magazines with a friend, and the baroque weirdness of our school drama shows. (Though sadly we never had helicopters or pyrotechnics.)

Wes Anderson filmed Rushmore at his old school in Texas, and there’s a lot of him in Max. I don’t think he’s bettered it since.

The Faculty (1998) - Paul's pick

The Faculty is Robert Rodriguez’s 1998 tongue-in-cheek sci-fi horror about an alien parasite taking over a school - teachers first. A disparate group of teen movie cliches must band together, putting differences aside to defeat the water chugging alien teachers before the invasion really gets out of hand. It’s a fun, gory and very 90s mash up of The Breakfast Club and The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers.

The cast is wonderfully star studded with Josh Hartnett’s standout antihero ‘Zeke’ sporting the worst haircut this side of a pair of blunt scissors. 

Amongst some dodgy CGI and the bizarre question of ‘why do aliens make their female hosts sexier when they take them over?,’ The Faculty reminds us to question our teachers, to explore the themes of assimilation and obedience inside school, and to maintain our own individuality as we transition to adulthood. 

Napoleon Dynamite (2004) - Max's pick

There’s a lot of weird stuff in Napoleon Dynamite. Including a scene where the titular Napoleon is tasting milk and diagnosing what’s wrong with the cows (with each correct answer accompanied by an iconic “yesss”). Or a tech-addicted older brother whose one wish is to meet his e-girlfriend in person. Or Pedro (as in ‘vote for’) making a pinata of the girl at school who rebuffed his advances.

By comparison my own school years were pretty normal, but at the time the day-to-day felt as weird as the events in rural Idaho. Not much actually ‘happens’ in Napoleon Dynamite, but it’s a film that I find myself thinking about a lot. I remember it in the way that I remember my time at school: not as a continuous plot, but as a series of seemingly disconnected moments that stick in my head for reasons I can’t explain.

With all the silly accents, dance routines, and unbelievable line reads in Napoleon Dynamite, it’s kind of a miracle that the film has as much heart as it does. It captures the feeling of not quite fitting in at home or at school, and how important it is to find your people. 

Also - remember how many people had Vote for Pedro t-shirts? Most films couldn’t dream of that kind of impact.

Donnie Darko (2001) - Dani's pick

Angst thrives in the claustrophobic routine of being a teenager - your whole existence confined to classrooms, the commute to school and the dinner table. (And if you’re really lucky watching Evil Dead at the local cinema with a young Jake Gyllenhaal). Amidst school assemblies and talent shows this film captures the true banality of school. Who can blame Donnie for committing some light arson? 

Despite the film being set in the late eighties, my school education two decades later wasn’t a far cry from the cheesy “Facing Fear” educational video Donnie and his classmates are shown - although my all-girl secondary school focused more on a Mean Girls-style message of “do not have sex, because you will get pregnant and die”.

No film takes me back to the casual bullying and suffocation of school like Donnie Darko. Watching this makes me want to sit far away from my peers, irritated and isolated, with my earphones in blasting Tears For Fears. 

There you have it. Five films, several questionable educational establishments and absolutely no consensus about what constitutes appropriate behaviour on school premises.

Happy schooling!