FREEDOM WRITERS

4 Stars – INSPIRATIONAL

          The multicultural high school portrayed in Richard LaGravenese’s “Freedom Writers” is a microcosm of humanity at its best and at its worst.  Depicting the true story of teacher Erin Gruwell’s (Hilary Swank) gifted ability and passionate drive to create community with a group of high school freshmen, this film shows how she cares for both their souls and their minds.  It also shows what one person can do, if she is willing to rise above the institutional limitations often experienced by teachers and students alike. That Gruwell went on to form the Freedom Writers Foundation to replicate this success in other schools is a testimony of its universal importance.

            So set the stage for the events that transpire, the film begins with the information that following the riots after the Rodney King verdict, scores of people were murdered and so the Long Beach school system opened its doors to voluntary integration.  In five short years, this experiment in multicultural education had collapsed into a battlefield of racial tension and gang warfare.  Using the actual diaries of the students in her classes, the tale is told with such vivid clarity that it rings true to both heart and mind as we walk through this amazing metamorphosis of the students of “Room 203.”

            Believing her father’s rhetoric about having helped to change the world during the civil rights movement, Gruwell decides to abandon a career as a social justice lawyer and instead dedicate her exceptional intellect to helping young people in high school before they become hardened criminals.  She naively thought that they would be innocent children and so she was unprepared for what she found.

Raised in her affluent neighborhood and graduating with honors from her masters program in education, her privileged upbringing had no similarity to the childhood experiences of her students or the indifference of the educational system required to care for them.  Accepting the position as the teacher of remedial freshman English, her students had long ago experienced the pain and indifference of a world at war.

            Using the diary of Eva (April L. Hernandez) to set the stage, we are informed of what Gruwell only later discovered: the various ethnic groups on the high school campus were the children of parents whose generational gang warfare had cost many of them their lives.  The hatred, sorrow, loss and fear were all real and it did not stop at the high school borders, it invaded the campus and classrooms.

            Unwilling to invest in new books for these students who were going to “drop out by their junior year,” the school’s administration had given up on them.  But with personal sacrifice and intuitive genius, Gruwell not only got the teenagers new books with her own second and third jobs’ income, but she also got them to start writing their own life stories.  With an openness and a humanity that creates compelling cinema, it is all the more inspiring to realize her sacrifices and commitment so touched this group of young, troubled, lost human beings that a community within which they could thrive was created.  Within this caring, loving, forgiving, reconciling community, Gruwell exposes them to the lessons of history and the literature of its survivors as they read the Diary of Anne Frank and saw the eventual outcome of ethnic hatred as shown in the Nazi Holocaust.

            The power of film to communicate a story of social change is no more dramatically shown than in “Freedom Writers.”  All of us should consider its message in a world that is becoming increasingly tribal in gang warfare of international proportions.  Until we realize that we are all eternally of the same human family we will continue to segregate ourselves into insignificant transitory differences and engage in unnecessary yet devastating warfare.

 

Discussion:

1. In a stroke of frustrated genius, Erin Gruwell compares the drawing of a black student with big lips with the Nazi drawings of Jewish people with big noses to explain how seemingly insignificant behaviors can lead to racial warfare of horrific proportions. Do you see any similar things being done and tolerated at a national level today?

 

2. The power of community to break down the differences between the students was both a threat to the school administration and to the gangs that lived off of fear and hatred.  Why do you believe community is such a powerful force?  Why do we not see more of it?

 

3. In the end, the real Erin Gruwell did leave teaching and started a foundation to help other teachers.  Do you believe this form of education is not sustainable, as the division chair, Margaret Campbell (Imelda Staunton) claimed?  Is it so unusual that it has no hope of being duplicated throughout the world?

 

4. Do you believe education is enough to change individuals’ lives, and this society?  Or do you believe that a commitment, personal sacrifice and loving care for others is also required? What do you think would have been the outcome if Erin Gruwell had only been an excellent teacher but had not gotten personally involved in her students’ lives?