Freedom Writers (2007)

by | Apr 17, 2007 | DVD & Blu-ray Video Reviews | 0 comments

Freedom Writers (2007)

Starring: Hilary Swank, Imelda Staunton, Patrick Dempsey, Scott Glenn
Studio: Paramount
Video: Enhanced for 16.9 widescreen, color
Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround; English DD 2.0 Surround;  French DD 5.1
Subtitles: English
Extras: Commentary by Director Richard LaGravenese and Hilary Swank, Deleted scenes, “Making A Dream”, Freedom Writers Family, Freedom Writers: The Story Behind the Story, Photo gallery, Theatrical trailer
Length: 122 minutes
Rating: ****

Freedom Writers, based on the book Freedom Writers’ Diaries, is a real story about the journey of one determined and gifted teacher, Erin Gruwell (Hilary Swank), and her students. The film is set in 1994, at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, a couple of years after the Rodney King riots in LA. Racial tension and gang violence abound. Teachers at the school resent the predominantly Asian, Black and Latino kids bused in and consider them unteachable. The acting, writing, directing, music (the symphonic score is by Mark Isham, hip hop by wil.i.am) create a convincing, compelling and authentic film. The video transfer maintains high resolution, even in darkly-lit scenes. The film’s authenticity is primarily the result of the use of the journals of the students who came to be known as the Freedom Writers.

In the face of their strong resistance to her initial attempts to interest them in learning and bureaucratic roadblocks within the school system, Gruwell perseveres. In order to provide the kind of books (such as The Diary of Anne Frank) she knows will be meaningful to them, she takes on two part-time jobs. The students start out as “tribes” with borders and gang warfare. The film is about how they evolve inside and out in their relationships with their teacher and with each other, how they learn to value themselves and make positive changes during their high school years.

The one white kid in the room is the only one in her class who has heard of the Holocaust. The kids begin to bond after a field trip to the Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance where they learn the whole history of the Holocaust.  When the woman who sheltered Anne Frank visits their class, she tells them  “We can all turn on a small light in a dark room.”

Gruwell gives them all a notebook for keeping a journal about their lives and thoughts. It proves to be deeply cathartic for these kids to write about their lives and ultimately leads to change and success. All of Gruwell’s students graduated high school and some went to college.  (Those notebooks eventually became The Freedom Writers’ Diaries, published in 1999.) Erin Gruwell and the Freedom Writers started The Freedom Writers Foundation dedicated to recreating the success of room 203 in classrooms throughout the country.

The extras, rich in background information, are well worth watching. “Making a Dream”  features wil.i.am who wrote much of the hip hop part of the film score which contains parts of Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech and is intended to sound like a collaboration with King. In “Freedom Writers Family” we learn the impact of making the film on the lives of the young actors as well as hear comments by Hilary Swank  and Richard LaGravenese, director and screenwriter. Most of the young actors playing the Freedom Writers were non-actors and in many cases their lives paralleled the lives they portrayed. We meet Erin Gruwell, an extraordinary teacher, and hear her reflections. The young actors blossomed and opened up in ways similar to Erin Gruwell’s students. “Freedom Writers: The story behind the story” reveals more about the process in real life behind the determined teacher and her students who began reacting only to the race and color of each other and ended up as a positive, supportive family.

-Donna Dorsett

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