It was a good show about the intricacies of being a good teacher, of inspiring your students, and maintaining discipline in a classroom divided by gender, and a multitude of ethnic backgrounds: African-American, Cambodian, Hispanic and white from "Wonderbread land".
Perhaps they can get it on a DVD. In the States Freedom Writers has already grossed in the States P230 million from theatres and P144 million from DVD rentals and sales. Freedom Writers stars two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank who played Maggie Fitzgerald in Million Dollar Baby (2005). Freedom Writers is a true story based on the published diaries students kept for their teacher, The Freedom Writers Diary (1999).
Erin Gruwell (Hilary Swank) is a 23-year-old graduate teacher in her first year of teaching. She is full of optimism and enthusiasm, and she has chosen the challenge of teaching freshman English at Wilson High School in Long Beach, California. It is 1994, two years after the riots in Los Angeles, 30km to the north, caused by the police abuses of Rodney King. The movie is told partly through the voices and words that had been penned by the students who kept the diaries.
It begins with Eva (acted passionately by April Lee Hernandez), but there are a number of other students whose stories of domestic and street violence, and labelling by the education system, that stand out. The four key students, representing the other racial clusters in the class are: Andre the drug-pusher (played by the singer Mario); the homeless teenager Marcus (Jason Finn); a Cambodian girl who had been in refugee camps, Sindy (Jaclyn Ngan); and from Newport Beach, Ben (Hunter Parrish). It is Eva's story that ties the film together.
At first Erin cannot cope with her class, even get their interest or respect. Her students ignore her as they pursue their own lives within her classroom. They see her as irrelevant to them, offering nothing of any value, a white, upper-middle class snob who knows nothing about where they come from, their personal tragedies and conflicts, the number of friends they have seen die, the struggle to go to school when you are homeless, and so on. One says: "I'll give that bitch one week." Erin tries to arouse their interest in Homer's Ulysses. Eva says to her, "You don't know what you doing ... have you ever been a teacher before? You don't know nothing. You don't know the pain we live."
Erin, inspired by a racist sketch being passed around the classroom, asks them at one point if they knew about the greatest gang leader of all, who dwelt on racial pride, stigmatised others as less than human, killed millions, and waged war to extend his territory? They had never heard of the "Holocaust". She suddenly has found an opening and is transformed her from a "do-gooder" to a concerned friend.
Erin's husband, Scott Casey (Patrick Dempsey), cannot understands her desire to teach in a troubled school with teenagers who are at war with each other, ones that even proclaim to her that they hate white people. She admits to him: "It is not exactly how I pictured it." Her life at home is a subplot documenting his increasing alienation from her.
The reverse happens with her father, Steve Gruwell (Scott Glenn), who at first, tells her not to, "waste her talents on people who don't give a damn about education", then slowly comes to admire what she is doing and eventually becomes involved in helping her with her extra curricular projects with her students.
Erin is forced to fight battles on many fronts. One is with her supervisor, Margaret Campbell (Imelda Staunton), who writes her Freshman English students off as second class, deserving only simplified abridged books because they are hopeless and have no future. The educational system refuses her the extra resources she believes she needs - it won't even support field trips.
So Erin gets a night job, selling bras and a weekend job at a local hotel so she can pay for these things for her class. This includes full copies of books, like The Diary of Anne Frank. Suddenly the students are reading and identify with the story of a 14-year- old Jewish girl in hiding from the Nazis in Holland. The movie now takes off and amazing things begin to happen.
It is unfortunate that the film spends more time on Erin's relationships with Scott and Steve, and less on the students. They certainly deserved more than they get. It does succeed in compressing what would be only a few hours a week (as both teacher and students had many other classes) into a movie that deserves better. Erin went on to set up a foundation to continue her work in the schools.
There have been lots of films about teachers and troubled children, going back to To Sir with Love (1967) and more recently, also in California, Stand and Deliver (1988) and then Dangerous Minds (1995). The difference here lies in the use of the diaries and the ethnic conflict that is blatantly present in and outside the classroom.
Freedom Writers is two hours long. It is directed and scripted by Richard LaGravenese.
The cinematographer is Jim Denault; the editor is David Moritz; and the music is by Mark Isham and will.i.am. [email protected]
