Film review: "Modern Times"

Title: The better the education, the better the money.

In this essay, I am going to make a review of the film “Modern Times”. Then, I am going to link this review to the reflection about what we can get from this movie in order to give it a good use as future teachers in the classroom. Finally, I am going to conclude this topic by highlighting the most important idea of this report.

This film was directed and written by Charles Chaplin and was released on February 25th, 1936 in the United States. This movie is about the way of living of the working class people during the Modern Times. Men working hard and fast in factories in order to beat the competition. Employers taking advantage of them to earn more money themselves. Furthermore, in this film it is shown a development of technology and the influence of consumerism on people. However, all this is seen from a comical perspective. Charlie, Chaplin’s character, is used as a guinea pig for an experiment in which he is fed through a special machine while working not to stop with his work when eating. This experiment ends up failing making him spit his food. Moreover, Charlie gets bored due to the hard work pressure on employees so he starts joking around which disturbs his other colleagues. He goes to jail where he prevents an attempted escape of convicts and then leaves jail, finds love and is chased by the police again.

According to my personal opinion about the film, I may say that I did like it. I found it entertaining and funny. The story was original and hilarious. Chaplin did a great job by giving such an important and complex period as the Modern Times a comical air by being joking around in the factory acting as a rebel against the system when everybody should be working. On the other hand, not everything was comical or amusing. There were parts in the movie that showed the sort of drama experienced by the working class people at that period of time like when the girl had to steal food to feed her little sisters and unemployed father which contrasted with Chaplin’s cheerful role in the film.

Because of this movie, we can realize the great value of education. During the Modern Times, a lot of people belonging to the working class were not educated. That’s why they could not have a chance to apply for better jobs, were exploited and also became unemployed. It is very likely that used to happen due to the fact that their families could not afford good schools for them so they had to be prepared for working since very little. However, the kinds of jobs they could apply for were really bad. They had to work pretty hard with no vacation, unemployment benefit, life assurance, nor all-risks insurance so they could easily be exposed to danger and it would not matter. Besides, they did not earn so much money either. Nevertheless, their employers could receive a good education at school and even at college which gave them the right to do whatever they wanted with their employees like exploiting them by making them work harder and faster to make money but for these educated people not for the employees. As these workers did not know this because they did not have a good level of education, these other people took advantage of their ignorance. That’s why it is so important as future teachers to let our students know about what happened during the Modern Times and link the reality of that time to the one of nowadays because it is not so different. The better the education, the better the money. This way, it is more likely that our students want to attach importance to their education.

To conclude, I may say that the film “Modern Times” shows us the way how employers (educated people) take advantage of their employees’ ignorance by in a certain way taking part of their salary because they do not have enough level of education to realize or demand about this kind of injustice. That’s why it is essential to let our students know about what happened during this period due to the fact it is not so different than it occurs nowadays.