(1994)
3
Tom Wiener
In Frederick Wiseman's first "sequel" of sorts, he revisits an institution common to nearly all adults. His first foray into secondary education, 1969's High School, was set at Northeast High in suburban Philadelphia, where he found stultifying conformity and bored students, with the tumult of that era a largely distant backdrop. This time, he's on more fertile ground, an alternative secondary school on the Upper Upper East Side of Manhattan, with as ethnically diverse a student body as any Hollywood producer would want for a film about inner city kids. The staff, on the other hand, is largely white, an issue addressed in one of the film's earliest vignettes, a meeting involving three adults and a troubled black student. Wiseman's great good fortune was to be filming in the aftermath of the Rodney King trial verdict, and some of the film's best scenes deal with the students' reactions. Most of the scenes here are intimate encounters: teachers working one-on-one with students or leading small discussion groups, counselors meeting with a parent (there are never two present) and his or her child. As in all of his films, Wiseman avoids narration or direct interviews to set the context and address issues, depending upon the simple act of observation to reveal what's important about the institutions he profiles. Wiseman's results here are mixed. Few memorable individuals emerge from the film, and one faculty meeting seems to go on forever, involving an issue that's too abstract to be grasped without some supporting context. There are moments when you sense the camera is inhibiting the students from opening up more, both in the classroom and in meetings with counselors, though one of the film's strongest vignettes is of a 12-year-old boy breaking down in tears when he's confronted about his work habits by his mother and two staff members. But the film does often capture something that often eludes dramatic narrative features about schools: the complex series of negotiations that go on between adults and adolescents in a learning environment.
High School II on AllMovie
High School II (1994)
