Tears Of Knowing

A young girl sneaks into her classroom early, to leave her beloved teacher a present, but sees more than she should when she hides underneath the desk.

Tears Of Knowing from writer/director, Miles Marti follows young Ava (Shea) as she is dropped off to school early by her father. Ava is in primary/elementary school and is about six or seven years old. She knows that she is not supposed to be in the classroom without anybody else there, but she is so early, and there is nobody else about in the playground or the building, that she decides her class is the best place for her.

Whilst inside, Ava checks on the class pet, a golden haired guinea-pig by the name of Gus Gus. Poor little Gus Gus is far less perky this morning than he usually is and Ava can’t figure out what’s wrong – that is until Ms Price (Price) turns up acting all stressed and flustered, even more so than usual for an overworked, undervalued, and underpaid primary educator.

Ms Price is carrying a large cardboard box with holes in it, which is making little squeaking sounds, and Ava watches from her hiding place under one of the desks as a simple switcheroo happens right before her eyes. Ava then has to contemplate what she has just witnessed and must try to come to terms with it, whilst deciding just how this act is going to affect the relationship she has with one of her most trusted adults.

In the space of only six minutes, Marti tries to get across to us just how affecting small acts of subterfuge can be when played on the young minds of small children. As adults it can sometimes be only too easy to try to pull the wool over the eyes of the innocent, trotting out the tired old platitude to ourselves that ‘what they don’t know can’t hurt them’ and other such garbage. What we can fail to realise at times, however, is that children are far more knowledgeable and aware than we give them credit for, and that by trying to protect them we might be doing far more damage than we might believe.

A lot of the story is given to us through hand-held shots that drift this way and that, mimicking the young eyes of a curious child who is seeing more than they know they should, and Kai Romero’s cinematography keeps us right in the centre of the story with Ava. Marti’s direction, too, tries to keep Ava front and centre, never needing her to say too much for us to be able to understand her thoughts and her feelings, while her actions speak volumes about how she has come to terms with what she has witnessed. The setting of the classroom is also absolutely spot-on, with a real-life school being the backdrop for Ava’s story, and everything looking exactly the way an early years classroom would, bringing us directly into the frame along with the children in the class.

It is unknown whether Marti was trying to say anything with the choice of location in his movie, or whether it was just a convenient and accessible place to film, but the St. Jerome school offers another level of meaning behind the main message being given, especially if you consider the passage cited on the classroom door, of Matthew 4:19. We all know that the most pervasive lie that we tell children is the one about a jolly fat man with a white beard and a red coat who brings them presents at Christmas time. In fact it is so pervasive, and hard to shake, that most parents tie themselves in knots piling one fantastical fabrication on top of another to combat the justified questioning of the unlikeliness of it all, rather than admit to their children that they’ve being lying to them all of their lives. This can then, of course, be extrapolated to God, and the lies of all religions, which seek to ‘protect’ and ‘comfort’ the flock of innocents, whilst obviously using these lies for control and submission to authority.

Whether Marti is making these points or not, they are pertinent to the theme and message of Tears Of Knowing, and come out intrinsically through the watching of the film. It is not just the simple lie that is being covered up, it is also the blatant disregard for the actual knowing of the truth, that is so hurtful and damaging, although perhaps in the end ultimately freeing, for Ava. For what is on the surface a simple short film, Tears Of Knowing opens up a whole Pandora’s Box of questions for adults and parents to answer when deciding just how much of the world to share with their children, and which lessons should be taught when.