Maggie Gyllenhaal is a Staten Island early-childhood educator lacking something meaningful in her life who starts obsessing over a gifted student, which leads to problems too good to reveal. Suffice to say, when you watch “The Kindergarten Teacher,” Sara Colangelo’s American remake of the similarly-titled Israeli drama, you are transported into what Gyllenhaal describe to me as the psyche of a “starving, vibrant woman’s mind.”
Colangelo, who stunned more than a few moviegoers with her 2014 feature directing debut “Little Accidents,” creates a film with its own unique identity, the fleshing out of a woman that desperately needs to find meaning in her life. However, the movie belongs to Gyllenhaal, in an awards-worthy performance, whom, along with Colangelo’s patient camera, keeps playing with our heads throughout the proceedings. The fact that she maintains a sort of sympathetic nature to her character makes this brilliant film all the more mysterious to the eyes.
I spoke to Colangelo and Gyllenhaal about the film, which premiered on Netflix this past Friday.
Your film is a “remake” of the Israeli movie, and I’m emphasizing the quotations on remake because you’ve made a film that is really its own unique statement and can easily be seen in its own. What made you decide that this was the movie to make?
Colangelo: I saw the Israeli film in early 2015, and I was floored by it. Nadav is an incredible writer, so I have to give him credit because it’s such a beautiful structure and it felt like such a Greek tragedy. There was something about it that felt so allegorical. You could take the story, the structure, and put it anywhere, and it could still hold up. I was very excited to take it and shift it, root it more from Lisa’s point of view. The kindergarten teacher in our movie is a whole other creature altogether, but also, from a directorial standpoint, we wanted to anchor everything from her point of view. Nadav was discussing masculinity in Israel, and even a country at war whereas we, in our country, we’re going through an election and a different set of problems. I would never take on a remake unless I felt I could make it into something unique and particular. I wanted to create this woman that went between Staten Island and New York who also wanted to engage in art more deeply.
Your character is so unpredictable; you have no idea what she might do next, and it’s that ambiguity that makes it such a hypnotic experience. Did you two ever discuss what was going on inside Lisa’s head?
Gyllenhaal: I’m not big into talking, in an intellectual way, about what’s happening with the character because so often it doesn’t make intellectual sense. It makes emotional sense, an unconscious sense which doesn’t fit in with in-depth conversations exactly. If you read Sara’s script — I did because I didn’t see the Israeli original and I still haven’t — but I wanted to make something that came from me. When I read the script, I felt like there was something that script was asking to have expressed that felt so current about what was going on in my mind at that time which has to do with: “what are the actual consequences when you starve a vibrant woman’s mind?” Like what actually happens? [laughs]
I did this interview about “The Deuce” the other day with Trevor Noah, but he’d seen just the trailer for “Kindergarten Teacher,” and he was like “Is it a thriller? Is it a horror movie? Is it an intimate movie about a woman’s mind?” and it’s all those things, it’s a hybrid, but it also has a little bit of humor. I think it’s “new” because it’s a feminine expression and we haven’t really had all that much of that — not just because Sara is a woman, you can direct a movie as a woman, and it’s still not a feminine expression.
Your main character wants to nurture this boy.
Gyllenhaal: She thinks that’s what she’s doing but she’s feeding off of him, that is always disturbing. She’s doing that because she isn’t being fed anywhere else, not in her marriage, not with her own mother and not with her art.
The lack of confidence in her own art is a fascinating part of this movie as well.
Gyllenhaal: I read an article or two where they say that her poetry is mediocre but her poetry is actually written by a brilliant published poet, and the movie is much easier to watch if her poetry is not good, but if her poetry is compelling, such as it is in the film, and still she’s written off, it is way harder to watch it.
 in New York becomes obsessed with one of her students whom she believes is a child prodigy.){kind=link}