Freedom Writers (2007)

• Year: 2007
• Released: 05 Jan 2007
• Country: Germany, United States
• Adwords: 2 wins & 1 nomination
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0463998/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/Freedom_Writers
• Metacritics: https://www.metacritic.com/movie/freedom-writers
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English, Spanish
• MPA Rating: PG-13
• Genre: Biography, Crime, Drama
• Runtime: 123 min
• Writer: Richard LaGravenese, Freedom Writers, Erin Gruwell
• Director: Richard LaGravenese
• Cast: Hilary Swank, Imelda Staunton, Patrick Dempsey
• Keywords: based on novel or book, biography, based on true story, based on a true story, high school,

	7.6/10
	64/100
	70% – Critics
	87% – Audience

Freedom Writers Storyline

It’s 1994 in Long Beach, California. Idealistic Erin Gruwell is just starting her first teaching job, that as freshman and sophomore English teacher at Woodrow Wilson High School, which, two years earlier, implemented a voluntary integration program. For many of the existing teachers, the integration has ruined the school, whose previously stellar academic standing has been replaced with many students who will be lucky to graduate or even be literate. Despite choosing the school on purpose because of its integration program, Erin is unprepared for the nature of her classroom, whose students live by generations of strict moral codes of protecting their own at all cost. Many are in gangs and almost all know somebody that has been killed by gang violence. The Latinos hate the Cambodians who hate the blacks and so on. The only person the students hate more is Ms. Gruwell. It isn’t until Erin holds an unsanctioned discussion about a recent drive-by shooting death that she fully begins to understand what she’s up against. And it isn’t until she provides an assignment of writing a daily journal – which will be not graded, and will remain unread by her unless they so choose – that the students begin to open up to her. As Erin tries harder and harder to have resources provided to teach properly (which often results in her needing to pay for them herself through working second and third jobs), she seems to face greater resistance, especially from her colleagues, such as Margaret Campbell, her section head, who lives by regulations and sees such resources as a waste, and Brian Gelford, who will protect his “priviledged” position of teaching the senior honors classes at all cost. Erin also finds that her teaching job is placing a strain on her marriage to Scott Casey, a man who seems to have lost his own idealistic way in life.

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Freedom Writers Movie Reviews

The Wider World

Films about our educational system have been moneymakers from The Blackboard Jungle, to Up the Down Staircase, to Stand and Deliver and now Freedom Writers. This film and Hilary Swank’s lead performance in it have an honored place among those previously mentioned.

If you noticed the common thread running through all the films mentioned and this one is that it seems to take a neophyte teacher to shake up the system and try something new. And that’s what Hilary Swank is in Long Beach High School a newly racially mixed school where all the kids seem to be balkanized.

The real miracle that was wrought in Freedom Writers is that Swank gave these kids a vision of the wider world. And that vision showed that as young people they had far more in common than the race and ethnicity that divided them. The writing came when she had them keep diaries that could be read on a volunteer basis.

I had a few good teachers like Hilary Swank in my youth. Some of them were just time servers and not terribly inspirational. Those are the folks the educational system ought to treasure.

I’d expect nothing less than the best from a two time Oscar winner and Ms. Swank does deliver. She gets good support from Patrick Dempsey as the husband who becomes estranged from her with her single minded devotion to her kids and from Scott Glenn as her father.

What was for me the best was having those kids read about the troubles of another young person who they could relate to. That would be Anne Frank and her diary. And the meeting of Swank’s class with Holocaust survivors was tender and touching indeed.

I wish she’d been my teacher and given me The Diary of Anne Frank to read. Better than reading Silas Marner.

familiar formula

It’s 1994 L.A. Erin Gruwell (Hilary Swank) is a rookie wide-eyed idealistic English teacher in Woodrow Wilson high school. It’s two years after the riots. The school was academically excellent until it voluntarily integrated. She is given the at-risk kids who segregate themselves into racial cliques. Her father Steve Gruwell (Scott Glenn) is disappointed in her wasting her effort. Her husband Scott Casey (Patrick Dempsey) slowly stops being supportive. Administrator Margaret Campbell (Imelda Staunton) refuses to give her proper books. Erin gives the kids diaries to write in. The movie also follows the narrator student Eva Benitez who witnesses her boyfriend’s drive-by shooting of her classmate and must testify.

It follows the very familiar formula of the white savior teacher and the rough students in need of her help. Hilary Swank is excellent and pulls off this standard melodrama. She really needs help from the students but the young actors don’t stand out. They are fine for the purpose of this movie but not much more. Their stories are sincere. I can’t oppose its sincerity but it does wear thin when it hits the nail over the head so directly and so often. The heart is in the right place but the formula is unchanged.

Freedom Writers- It’s Just the Same Old Story ***

As far as movies go, this is still an excellent adaptation of what goes on in our urban schools. Hilary Swank gives a superb performance as an idealistic teacher who confronts a bunch of misfits and becomes a miracle worker. This is where the movie suffers as is the case with most of these school movies. By the middle and end of these films such as “To Sir, With Love,” and “The Ron Carey Story,” the worst pupils imaginable become outstanding. We never saw this in earlier school films such as “Goodbye, Mr. Chips,” or “Good Morning, Miss Dove.”

The film is realistic when it shows the uncaring school district and especially the English supervisor. The latter was memorable.

It should be noted that the real character that Swank portrayed left teaching after several years. If she were so devoted to education and so very successful in the classroom, she should have remained. After all, this was supposedly her calling in life and this supposed calling led to the break-up of her marriage.

Let’s challenge our film directors to make realistic movies about the school systems in our country.