Freedom Writers

Freedom Writers

This movie takes place in Los Angeles and follows a teacher by the name Erin who has just started working at a school that has a lot of problems with their students. She takes on a class that doesn’t seem to care about education. In the class there are representatives of different “races”, Latinos, Asians and Blacks for the most part and they hate each other and fight in and after school. In the neighborhood they live in you can get shot and killed anytime, anywhere by another race. Erin tries many ways to get the class going in the right direction and nothing works until she gives them all a diary to write their thoughts in if they want to. Almost all the students write one, this is the part in the movie when things start to go right for the class and Erin and the students focus on and realize more things. Then they start to read Anne Frank’s diary and this project ends up inviting Miep Gies (that help Anne Frank hide during World War II) to the school. She gives them inspiration by telling them that they are heroes. Erin or as the students call her: Miss G is very happy with direction things are going but when the class realize that they can’t have her as their teacher next year they riot and demonstrate and everything ends with them having her as their teacher for more than just next year. Many of the students go on to study in college.

                                 Characters

Erin Gruwell: Erin is the teacher that the movie follows, in the beginning of the movie she is married to Scott. They get a divorce at the end of the movie because Scott feels like he is living a life he did not agree to. Erin is very kind and takes good care of all her students.

Eva Benitez: Eva is the second main character as we learn much of her background story and thoughts. She doesn’t like White people because she says they think that they can just do what they want. Her hate for White people can be traced back to when she was a kid and her dad was arrested even though he was innocent. As the movie goes on she changes her mind though.

Marcus: Marcus is one of the characters that changes the most and I thought that he is the most interesting one. He gets really inspired by Anne Frank and is one of the students that really has wanted Miep Gies to come to the school. He was kicked out of his house by his mom when he joined a gang (I think) but later on she lets him back.

All in all think that all the characters are well portrayed.

If we compare our school with theirs we would see a lot of differences, for example their school doesn’t give everyone the same chance and expectations that we get and we are more focused on learning stuff and we know why we go to school.

According to my opinion all the students judge each other by their race without really knowing why they protect their own but at the end of the movie the students realize that it is wrong and stand up for each other, one example for this would be when Eva got called up to court because she was a witness for a murder. The murderer was the same race as her so she was 100% sure that she would blame another guy who was there but she realized that it was wrong and told the truth. Her dad would not talk to her anymore but Erin was proud.

The message of this movie is that it doesn’t matter where you come from or what color your skin has, we are all people and can’t be judged by our outside.

                                                                                         

I think that the movie had a great message but it’s not my kind of movie, I liked how they made it feel real and they made it easy to care about the characters.