Hollywood writes a tired, true story

The film Freedom Writers, directed by Richard LaGravenese, is based on the true story of teacher Erin Gruwell, whose book, The Freedom Writer's Diaries: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them, garnered national attention.

Erin Gruwell, played by Hilary Swank, is the film's protagonist and takes on a room full of supposedly "unteachable" students. Patrick Dempsey plays her emotionally distant husband.

Set in the aftermath of the L.A. riots, racial tensions remain high and are felt most acutely at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California. When the school opted for voluntary integration, it lost 75 percent of its "strongest" students, which is a codeword for "white." Most of Ms. Gruwell's students live in rough, gang-infested neighborhoods and feel like they live in a war zone.

Gruwell initially tries to connect with her class by analyzing the lyrical style in Tupac Shakur's music but soon realizes that trust and respect will not be earned so easily.

She makes the sincere but na've assertion that color doesn't matter. Next door, a white teacher asks the lone black student to talk about the "black experience" in Alice Walker's The Color Purple.

When a racial caricature of an African-American student circulates around Gruwell's classroom, she uses the opportunity to relate Nazi caricatures of Jews during the Holocaust. They read Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and see parallels to their own lives. Keeping journals for class provides an outlet for these students to express the violence, despair, and small victories in their own lives.

True to form, Gruwell's methodology faces criticism from administration. Imelda Staunton plays Margaret Campbell, who asks her if she can recreate it for every class and student. Campbell points out that the mission of the school is to pass and educate as many students as possible, not just "special cases." Campbell brings up legitimate concerns.

The most powerful scene in the film is when Pat Carroll, who plays Miep Gies, the woman who hid the Frank family, visits Gruwell's California classroom and states that the students were "the real heroes."

Gruwell instilled in her students a desire to earn an education and seek a better life beyond the violence and despair that surrounds them. She followed some of her students to California State University, Long Beach, where she is now a visiting professor.

It is a tired Hollywood story: a young, idealistic teacher succeeds, against all odds, in inspiring a room full of disadvantaged, "at-risk" students. Racial clichés abound as a white woman heroically dares to believe in her room full of mostly poor students of color. Nonetheless, it is the real-life and heartbreaking testimonies of students in Freedom Writers.