MUSIC OF THE HEART
Reviewed by Harvey Karten Miramax Films Director: Wes Craven Writer: Pamela Gray Cast: Meryl Streep, Angela Bassett, Aidan Quinn, Gloria Estefan, Cloris Leachman
When David Lynch made a movie this year starring a lawnmower, we felt sure that this was not just an instrument to make suburban grasslands look like golf courses but an out-and-out serial killer. What a surprise that the machine was simply a convenient--if unstable--transport system for an half-blind octogenarian visiting his ailing brother in a neighboring Midwestern state. Wes Craven has now joined the bandwagon of newly chaste and virtuous filmmakers. The horrormeister who has already turned out such dramas of fear and loathing as critic Jon Bauer's favorite "Last House on the Left," "A Nightmare on Elm Street," "Vampire in Brooklyn" and "Scream" now turns to a sweet, inspiring, true story with a documentary look about a woman who faced the horror of stubborn parents and tenacious administrators before butchering the bogeymen of bureaucratic bullheadedness.
"Music of the Heart" is sentimental like "The Straight Story" but unlike Lynch's conflict-free tale, this one is loaded with contention. The trouble with "Music" is not its occasional stickiness but its predictability. We follow the usual trajectory: the principal character is in heaps of trouble during the initial phase but by the conclusion every last knot is neatly tied. The marital difficulty, the dissension of school authorities and some parents, the difficulties in getting grade- school kids from the ghetto disciplined and involved with the violin lessons--not a single dilemma remains at the conclusion of the two hours and then some. In this case, however, the argument can be made that the facts of the story are true: that "Music of the Heart" is simply a dramatized version of the wonderful documentary "Small Wonders" that you can easily obtain today on video which details the miraculous teaching done by Roberta Guaspari over a ten-year period despite the difficulties she faced at home as a single mother of two boys, devastated that her Navy husband had deserted the family that so loyally followed him from base to base.
Despite the flaws of predictability and occasional mawkishness, Craven's story tugs at the heartstrings just as the fifty lads in each of Guaspari's classes tug at their violin strings. Craven opens the tale as Guaspari (Meryl Streep), having been dumped by her husband, takes a humiliating job gift-wrapping presents at a department store on the advise of her interfering but well-meaning mother, Assunta (Cloris Leachman). When a former friend she had known from high school, Brian Sinclair (Aidan Quinn), runs into her, some chemistry develops, but while Guaspari is looking for a stable man to take the place of her ex, Brian is not interested in commitment.
Moving to East Harlem with her boys, Guaspari overcomes the resistance of the principal of an elementary school, Janet Williams (Angela Bassett), and of a constipated music teacher and is hired as a substitute. In one bizarre altercation, she is confronted by a parent who refuses to allow her son to continue in her class because Guaspari is teaching the works of "dead white composers" and because she has come to Harlem presumably "to save poor black kids who never asked to be saved." When this parent asks the teacher to name a single black composer and gets no answer, she seems to have lost her own argument. If indeed there are no major African-American composers, wouldn't the violin class be a step toward bridging that gap?
Almost miraculously restoring order in a classroom of young, energetic but unfocused kids, she gains their affection by proving to them that they could improve their playing weekly through practice and dedication, even holding a successful concert in the auditorium before previously incredulous parents. When after ten years' time the shortsighted local Board of Education and District Superintendent cut the funds out of the music and art programs, Guaspari is to be out of a job by the end of the term. But she survives by holding a concert of her charges together a few ringers like Isaac Stern and Itzhak Perlman in Carnegie Hall, no less, raising enough money to continue the wonderful program. Guaspari continues to this very day teaching in East Harlem and, in fact, during the closing credits the audience is given a phone number to call if they wish to pledge money to the program.
As satisfying to the soul as the movie is, perhaps it would not have succeeded so well in evoking the affection of an audience had someone of lesser talent than Meryl Streep been cast as Ms. Guaspari--though I wish that scripter Pamela Gray did not give her so many annoying "you-know"'s to say. At no time does she look like an actress rather than a grade-school teacher. A bit on the frizzy side and as vulnerable in her personal life as she is a strong presence in the classroom, Ms. Streep turns in her usual radiant and expressive performance of the sort we've come to expect after watching her in films like "Kramer vs. Kramer," "The Deer Hunter," and "The Bridges of Madison County." One wonders why her character in this film, however, remains a substitute teacher having never taken the necessary tests for a regular license. (Being a substitute, she can be dismissed at the whim of the principal and her salary can never rise above about 2/3 of what she might earn with the same work as a regular.)
The film moved me particularly because I've taught in inner-city schools for quite a number of years and have always tried to introduce programs to enrich the regular classroom curriculum. I've taken kids to Broadway and off- Broadway theater weekly, to field trips outside the country (Montreal), and to sites around New York City as diverse as concert halls and veterinary offices. During that time I was continually badgered by administrators to fill out the field-trip forms correctly, by parents who worried that their kids would be missing regular instruction, and by teachers who resented my taking the youngsters out of their classes occasionally for purposes that they considered only marginally educational. I'd not be so arrogant to say that in my years as an educator I'd achieved anything like what Ms. Guaspari had, but I hope that the public does not come away from this film believing that she is one in a million. There are 70,000 teachers out there running against almost insurmountable odds in trying to do their jobs with mostly poor kids in New York City. Many of them are heroes in my book though there is not nearly enough time or public interest to allow them to display their wares on the silver screen. Consider Ms. Guaspari not unique but an example of the daily miracles that quite a few career teachers have been capable of effecting.
Rated PG. Running Time: 124 minutes. (C) 1999 Harvey Karten
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