ABSTRACT
A scene from Jonah, Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 opens with a shot from the perspective of a student sitting in the middle of a crowded classroom. Students shuffle and giggle as an administrator enters the room and stands at the desk, announcing that the history teacher has retired and introducing Mr. Perly, an unknown who will be teaching the class. The lesson of the film recapitulates the teacher's words: 'In total synthesis, time disappears'. Even the monotony of the classroom can be overcome through the ideal meeting of the teacher's fantasy and students' fantasy. In Jonah's departure from reality, the film conforms to and reproduces this fantasy of teaching, at least as old as Plato's dialogues, that shapes our imaginary expectations of real classrooms, not despite its impossibility but because of it.
