Freedom Writers (review)
Poor Hilary Swank. She’s had a terrible year, and it’s only April. The biblical dog The Reaping is currently hounding her like Cerebus, but her awful 2007 started with Freedom Writers, dumped into the postholiday, pre-Oscar black hole of January and landing on DVD this week. And actually, it’s a film that works best in a particular kind of black hole, that kind that sucks away all your knowledge of every other film you’ve ever seen. (If only such black holes existed -- it would make enjoying so many movies so much easier.) If you’ve never been exposed to Stand and Deliver or Dangerous Minds or Mr. Holland’s Opus or Dead Poets Society or Lean on Me or Music of the Heart or Finding Forrester or Pay It Forward or Take the Lead, then have at it: you’ll probably love it. I’d rather watch Dead Poets Society again, but that’s just me.
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The game Swank is Erin Gruwell, a Southern California newbie teacher who rocked the limited worlds of her inner-city gangbanger students by introducing them to the power of the written word. Word up! Book ’em! Or something. Gruwell is a real person and her kids, who’d been abandoned by The System, did actually triumph in real life, but movies like this only denigrate their achievement by making it look like a snap to overcome the wheels of oppression and ignorance. And they sugarcoat the reality that people like Gruwell are merely rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic -- it’s wonderful, of course, that she saved a handful of kids, but what about the rest of them? The System still sucks, still needs a major overhaul or maybe to be trashed entirely and rebuilt from the ground up, but those hard realities can’t crush the fantasy of this flick, which actually gives what should be the voice of reason to the villain, a school administrator played by Imelda Staunton: she’s the meanie trying to keep Gruwell from helping the poor kids who only need someone to show them a little understanding.
If only things were that simple. Or, wait: In these movies, they are.
DVD extras include commentary with Swank and director Richard LaGravenese, deleted scenes, a making-of featurette, and more. [buy at Amazon]
(Technorati tags: Freedom Writers, Hilary Swank)
viewed at home on a small screenrated PG-13 for violent content, some thematic material and language
official site | IMDB
comments
posted by Nicole (April 21, 2007 4:30 PM)
Amen, sister. Ever since I took on a job as an adjunct college professor, I have disliked Inspirational Teacher movies, because they send the message that all we really need is for every teacher to be a magical savior who brings hope and teaches the young ones to believe in themselves. They fail to acknowledge that teaching is a JOB that requires, you know, WORK. Work that is often tedious, monotonous and fraught with whining and lame excuses. A teacher with a movie-star personality may be more fun for the students, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're learning anything. It's a pleasant delusion we like to adopt to make ourselves believe that the children of our country aren't growing up to believe that lying and cheating are ok and it's better to be popular than to be informed. How can we expect otherwise when that's the example set by not only many of their parents, but the President of the U.S. himself?
It's like we're relying on some kind of instinctual process to kick in, some nurturing, self-sacrificing... hey, wait, aren't most teachers women? Like the way mothers are also women? Hmmm..