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Freedom Writers an inspiration The amazing true story of a high school teacher who gives her gang-hardened students a voice – and a chance to begin a new life of their own. By Titus Jahng, managing editor
It's late at night, and a 23-year-old freshman English teacher sits alone at her desk in Room 203. Before her is a stack of cheap notebooks she bought for her students to use as diaries. “You must write in it every day,” she told them. “Write anything you want.” The diaries are now on her desk, waiting to be read. She stares at them for a moment, then takes one from the stack. In the silence of the empty classroom, she slowly opens to the first page. It begins, “At sixteen, I've seen more dead bodies than a mortician...” Freedom Writers (director Richard LaGravenese) tells the amazing true story of Erin Gruwell, a first-year teacher who arrives at Wilson High School in 1992 expecting to meet brilliant, hard-working, motivated students. Instead, she is given a class of “hopeless cases,” most of whom are expected to drop out before completing freshman year. Erin Gruwell (Hilary Swank) soon finds out she couldn't possibly be more out of place. She shows up on the first day wearing a smart red dress, high heels, and a glimmering pearl necklace. Wilson High, on the other hand, is a school divided by racial strife and gang violence, where murder is an everyday reality, and where “if you're Asian, Latino, or Black, you could get blasted anytime you walk out of your door.” And the moment the students see they have a white teacher, they hate her even more than they hate each other. Despite her disappointment, Ms. Gruwell begins to see that even gang-hardened teenagers have needs, and realizes that her lessons plans will have to change. She walked into class prepared to teach them about Homer and the Odyssey. She ends up changing their lives. Freedom Writers by no means charts unexplored territory and must tread carefully. The movie is faced with the danger of becoming a shallow remake of movies such as Dangerous Minds (1995). However, the film is by no means shallow – perhaps because the story is true, and because the audience realizes that the characters on the big screen were once real people going through real struggles. The movie contains some deeply emotional scenes, which at times border on sentimentality. However, LaGravenese plays those scenes carefully enough to deliver the powerful image and emotion without tugging heartstrings. LaGravenese also relieves some of the most dramatic scenes with carefully timed humor, which saves the movie from tasting like a soap opera.
Ms. Gruwell, affectionately dubbed “Ms. G” by her students, is played by Hilary Swank, who acts her character admirably. Swank brings same unique mixture of naiveté, determination, and courage she gave to Maggie Fitzgerald in Million Dollar Baby . Her students, who are all supposed to be high school freshmen, are played by actors who are obviously older than they are supposed to be. However, this is an easy flaw to ignore, and it hardly interrupts the flow of the movie. The basic storyline has been used before, and remains predictable throughout the entire movie. But the plot is not essential to Freedom Writers ; it's the characters that matter. The audience will remember Eva, the Mexican girl who saw her cousin shot to death when she was nine years old, who joined a gang after seeing the police drag her father off to jail, but who loves reading the Diary of Anne Frank and faithfully keeps a journal of her own. There's Marcus, who lives out on the streets and believes no one can understand people like him until he meets Ms. G and decides to turn his life around. And of course, there's Ms. G. herself, who struggles through opposition, discouragement, criticism, and a divorce to give her students their lives back and create for them a future they never before believed possible. Freedom Writers will remain one of the great movies of this year. It is more than entertainment; it is an inspiration. Score: 8.5/10
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