Freedom Writers (2007)

People so often feel as if they are forced to follow a certain path in life, it is this single idea that stops millions of people from achieving their dreams in life. Whether most people want to admit it or not, there is a point in life where people choose what they want to do and what others want them to do or expect them to do

Freedom writers follows a young teacher, Erin Gruwell- played brilliantly by Hillary Swank- who begins teaching in a neighbourhood riddled with gangs, crime and death. Her students conciser it a successful day if they live to see the sun go down. Erin, however, is determined to teach her class, who dismiss education and care not at all towards it, about tolerance, love and the importance of education, while both in school and in later on in life. I believe that a film with such strong and powerful messages like this should be viewed by all in order for everyone to learn such important life lessons about the important of being yourself and the ability that we have to be able to learn and not to take advantage of that. I think that this film was acted fantastically, the character development- particularly from the students- was terrific, and some of the scenes brought a tear to my eye, to see how for some a free education is their only chance to get somewhere in life. It definitely made me consider how lucky I am and how grateful I should be to have the opportunity to live a life with a free education and to live in a part of the world where I can have so many incredible and amazing opportunities.

However having said all this, I must add how this film does very much revolve around the idea of the white saviour complex, how the white female is able to save the day and help everything get better for everyone else. This, I feel let the film down for me, as it makes me think how our society is still very much prejudice towards white people being the saviours and other people need help from them, which is not at all the case. So this film explores many positive and negative issues and similarly gives of positives and negative view, however, as I said previously, I do think that this is an important film to watch and teaches many important life lessons, that will- at least for me- remain in your mind constantly.