{sidebar id=29}In the world
where we live nowadays, full of intolerance, racism and hate that seems to grow
up without reason from every corner, films like Freedom Writers
are needed and received as a fresh breeze that brings some hope.
Based on the
book The Freedom Writers Diary that compiles the story of Erin Gruwell
and her pupils during her first years as teacher in a problematic and violent
high school in Los Angeles,
the film teaches that the first knowledge that the pupils must learn in the
classrooms is respect for the others. Hilary Swank is convincing as the
naïve but strong idealistic teacher, and Jack Dempsey plays his part as
forgotten husband who spends his lonely hours watching matches on TV.
The story,
which happens mostly inside the classrooms, has some really emotive moments
when the youngsters remember their relatives and friends fallen due to
violence, or when Gruwell make them face the story of Ana Frank and the
Nazi Holocaust. Sometimes situations
cross the border of melodramatic and turn into ridiculous, with some dialogues
that we hardly expect to happen in a real classroom, but all in all, the film
is well enough balanced and achieves the goal of transmitting a message of
hope, understanding and equality for those viewers who want to listen to it.
For some of you, it can make you take a pencil again after a long time and
forget for some hours the personal computer on exchange of the familiar
notebook, or simply make you reflect for some minutes that the problems of your
neighbour are not so far from your own ones.