What will we accept for a false harmony? Why is it that we can so easily compartmentalize cruel acts, big and small, for the supposed greater good of our communities? What absurd lies will we have to tell ourselves to justify our cruelty, and what may we forever lose of our humanity as a result?
These questions, plus so many more, are at the dark heart of Jonatan Etzler’s witheringly funny and searing satirical thriller “Bad Apples.” Inventive and incisive in equal measure, it’s a film that throws a metaphorical Molotov cocktail into its modern private school setting then meticulously observes as the flames spread and burn the facade of polite society to the ground. Further bolstered by a fiercely funny, multilayered performance from Saoirse Ronan as a kind teacher in way over her head and striking shots by cinematographer Nea Asphäll, it’s an audaciously clever experience that more than makes the grade.
At the core of this is Maria (Ronan) who is struggling as an underappreciated and overworked teacher (also known as a teacher) at a posh elementary school. When an opening field trip ends with her troubled student, Danny (Eddie Waller), causing a crisis and derailing the day, she gets blamed for the whole thing. Her subsequent pleas for more resources to give Danny the help he needs go ignored and she finds herself stuck with nowhere to turn. When Danny then lashes out violently at another student and Maria tries to take matters into her own hands, the young boy suddenly goes missing.
The precise circumstances of this are best left to discover in the film, but let’s just say that Danny is someone everyone, save for Maria, seems to largely forget about. Despite his father, Josh (Robert Emms), trying to keep his name out there and lead a search for him, he’s looking in all the wrong places. As the film delicately reveals at every turn, Danny had been lost long before he went “missing,” and many would rather it stay that way so they don’t collectively have to confront all the ways society writ large is failing him. Instead, it’s just easier to start going back to business as usual, a chilling indictment that goes from a haunting murmur in the background to, eventually, a horrifying roar.
Inspired by the Rasmus Andersson novel “De Oönskade” with a sharp screenplay by Jess O’Kane, the film calls subtle attention to all these points of failure that can so easily become acceptable white noise in society. Maria, initially compassionate before digging herself deeper into a hole when it serves her, is driven to this moment because of how society fundamentally undervalues the integral work she does. Josh, though absent as a father, is also struggling with work delivering packages for a cold, Amazon-esque company that is constantly reminding him how he isn’t doing enough. It’s never didactic or overwrought, instead remaining narratively dynamic just as it is sociologically driven. It’s entertaining, but also incredibly effective in how it brings all its ideas together.
There are so many darkly delightful developments I wouldn’t dare spoil here. What can be said is that it features some of the best child acting you’ll ever see, with quiet moments from the young cast providing both the best jokes and most crushing revelations. The recurring motif of apples, while it could be annoyingly on-the-nose in lesser hands, actually complicates the common usage of the title phrase — they provide an unsettling glimpse of how easily something beautiful on the outside can become rotten to the core.
The final shots of how this accumulates into a crisis of convenience for Maria and the community that they soon exploit are as hilarious as they are horrifying, resulting in a showstopping finale. Etzler wields the film’s urgent satire like a scalpel, precisely cutting away at all the lies we so easily find ourselves telling that mask the darker truths about who we are. You’d best pull up a chair to Etzler’s vision. Class is in session, and missing out could cost more than we would care to admit.
