YALOVA
COMMON GRID TO ANALYSE A FILM
1. Basic information about the film:
Title:
Freedom Writers
Characters:
Production and Year of Production: ABD, 2007
2. where the film is set and in what
period: Long
Beach,California,ABD,
1992-1995
3. short summary of the plot:
Hilary Swank plays the role of Erin Gruwell, a new,
excited schoolteacher who leaves the safety of her hometown,
Newport
Beach, to teach at Woodrow
Wilson High
School in Long Beach,
where a new integration program puts students of all backgrounds and races in
classes together. Her enthusiasm quickly dwindles away when she realizes that
her class (all at-risk students, also known as "unteachables")
are not the happy-go-lucky eager students she was expecting. They must be
forced into class by security guards and segregate themselves into racial
groups in the classroom. The tension is apparent every time students from one
race look at those from another. Not only does she meet opposition from her
students, she also has a hard time with her department head, who believes she
should focus less on teaching her students to learn and read, and more on
teaching them discipline and obedience.
One night, two students, Eva (April Lee Hernández),
a Hispanic girl and narrator for the beginning and for some parts of the story,
and a Cambodian refugee, Sindy (Jaclyn Ngan),
find themselves in the same convenience store. Another student, Grant Rice
(Armand Jones), is frustrated at losing an arcade game and demands a refund
from the owner. When he storms out, Eva's boyfriend attempts a driveby shooting, accidentally killing Sindy's
boyfriend. As Eva is a witness, she must testify at court; she intends to
protect her own kind in her testimony.
At school, Gruwell
intercepts a racist drawing of one of her students and uses it to teach them
about the Holocaust.
She gradually begins to earn their trust and buys them composition books to
record their diaries, in which they talk about their experiences of being
abused, seeing their friends die, and being evicted. Determined to reform her
students, she takes two part-time jobs to pay for more books and spends more
time at school, to the disappointment of her husband (Patrick Dempsey).
Her students start to behave with respect and learn more. A transformation is
especially visible in one of her students, Marcus (Jason Finn). She invites several
Holocaust survivors to talk with her class about their experiences and takes
them on a field trip to the Museum of Tolerance. Meanwhile, her
unorthodox teaching methods are scorned by her colleagues and department chair
Margaret Campbell (Imelda Staunton). The next year
comes, and Gruwell teaches her class again for
sophomore year.
In class, when reading The Diary of Anne Frank, they
invite Miep Gies (Pat Carroll), the woman who
sheltered Anne Frank from the German soldiers to talk to them. After they raise
the money to bring her over, she tells them her experiences hiding Anne Frank.
When Marcus tells her that she is his hero, she denies it, claiming she was
merely doing the right thing. Her denial causes Eva to rethink lying during her
testimony. When she testifies, she finally breaks down and tells the truth,
much to some of her family members' dismay. Meanwhile, Gruwell
asks her students to write their diaries book form. She compiles the entries
and names it The Freedom Writers
Diary.
Her husband divorces her and
Margaret tells her she cannot teach her kids for their junior year. She fights
this decision, eventually convincing the superintendent to allow her to teach
her kids' junior and senior year. The film ends with a note that Gruwell successfully brought many of her students to
graduation and college.
4. things that particularly impressed you about the film:
“Freedom Writers” is inspired by a true
story and the diaries of real Long
Beach teenagers after the
Los
Angeles riots,during the worst outbreak of interracial
gang warfare so it is considerably real and
it
is really impressive that the teacher’s passion and willingness to teach a
group of Black, Latino
and Asian gangbangers who hate her
even more than each other.
5. the music:
does it convey specific themes/messages?
Music
by: Mark Isham,Will I am, RZA. Yes,it is.We think it reflects the life
style of the students.
6. what
is the message of the film and what did you learn from it?
When Erin begins to listen to them in a
way no adult has ever done, she begins to understand that for
these kids, getting through the day
alive is enough- they are not delinquents but teenagers fighting
“a war of the streets” that began long
before they were born.Erin gives them something they
never
had from a teacher before- respect.For the
first time, these teens experience a hope that maybe, they
might show the world that their lives
matter and they have something to say.We think
everybody
who is respected and believed in can
achieve everything he or she wants to do.
7. what would you change in the film?
At the end of the film, Gruwell was allowed to
teach her kids' junior and senior years. We think another teacher should have thought Gruwell’s kids at the next years because the students
should believe that they will be able to have different experiences and
successes without Gruwell.
FATİH SULTAN MEHMET
LİSESİ
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