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Title                                       : THE FREEDOM WRITERS DIARY                               

Director                                : Richard LaGravenese

Kind                                       : Drama film (non-fiction film)

Publisher                             : Paramount Pictures

                THE FREEDOM WRITERS DIARY The storyline of the movie takes place between 1992-1995, beginning with scenes from the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. Hillary 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, a formerly high achieving school which has recently had an integration program put in place. Her enthusiasm is quickly challenged when she realizes that her class are all "at-risk" students, also known as "unteachables", and not the eager students she was expecting. The students segregate themselves into racial groups in the classroom, fights break out, and eventually most of the students stop turning up to class. Not only does Gruwell meet opposition from her students, but she also has a hard time with her department head, who refuses to let her teach her students with books in case they get damaged and lost, and instead tells her to focus on teaching them discipline and obedience.

                When Erin discovers how much of their lives are blighted by racial prejudice, she introduces them to books like 'The Diary of Anne Frank' and begins to educate them for real; a process that culminates in the idea that each of them, like Anne, will keep a journal of their innermost thoughts. 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.

                Finally she has to make a big decision which one she will choose her students or her husband? Meanwhile, her unorthodox teaching methods are scorned by her colleagues and department chair Margaret Campbell (Imelda Staunton). Is this the end of her effot to make the difference? Does her husband divorce her?

                LaGravenese keeps everything feeling just a complication. By bringing up the real of LA’s riot, he does a big compile and bring off a fabulous film.

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Meilani Karina

XII IPA 4

SMAN 4 Bogor