Freedom Writers (2007)

Starring Hilary Swank

Freedom Writers is a stirring movie starring Oscar-winning actress Hilary Swank as a woman who becomes a teacher at a school in Los Angeles. The kids she teaches live in a violent, gang-ridden urban landscape, and school for them is a temporary thing that they’re forced to attend until they’re old enough to drop out. Hilary plays Erin Gruwell, an idealistic woman with no idea what she’s facing.

Gruwell is surrounded not only by unruly kids in her classes, but also by hostile administrators and unhappy teachers. The teachers resent what their school has become; they blame school integration for the school’s slide into poor test scores and difficult classes.

Amidst it all, Gruwell struggles to connect with her students. She tries to understand the lives they lead. In the process, she convinces them to start keeping private journals in which they can describe their lives. After sitting for hours reading their journals, she realizes that she cares deeply about these kids, and will do everything she can to make a difference for them. This includes taking a part-time job in order to buy books and other school supplies, as well as saving up in order to reward the kids with special educational trips that will definitely never be paid for from the school budget.

The movie has a subplot in Erin’s husband, Scott, played by Patrick Dempsey. Scott can’t understand why Erin is so determined to help these children in spite of the kids’ bad attitudes and an unhelpful school administration. He’s baffled why she cares so much. He resents the extra time she invests in them. Dempsey is well known for portraying an appealing doctor on the TV show Grey’s Anatomy. Here he takes on a difficult role, portraying a man moving away from his wife as she moves toward the things she was born to do.

There have been several movies recently about teachers who help disadvantaged kids, including Dangerous Minds and Stand and Deliver. Cynics could say this is just a copy of those. But it’s a fresh, new take on the subject, and it’s also based on a true story. Further, the young people portraying the students do a convincing job of showing us who they are and why they behave as they do. By the end of the movie we’re rooting for each one of them, and hoping against hope that the dangerous streets will not claim any of these kids as they connect with their teacher and their world. There are some tear-jerking moments like when Gruwell introduces the kids to survivors from the Nazi death camps. They start to see that the suffering they endure in their own lives is not unique.

This movie is convincing and moving. While there are some violent moments in the film that show the place these children live, they are not over-emphasized. Without these scenes, we wouldn’t understand just how much Gruwell accomplishes. It’s an inspiration to see how a determined person can make a difference in other’s lives. There can never be too many such movies.