Music of the Heart (1999)

Music of the Heart (Miramax Collector's Series)
This movie is a classic! It warms the heart and testifies of the difference one person can make in the lives of others. A must see for young and old alike.

Music Of The Heart
In my opinion, this was one of Meryl Streep's finest performances. This is a true story about the value of life and commitments. Meryl even learned to play the violin for the lead.

It is a shame there are not more movies of this quality.

"A Customer" Just Doesn't Get It -- This is a Great Film
One of the reviewers here, "A Customer", has panned this film and complains that it doesn't adequately reflect the allegedly miserable state of our urban student population. It sounds more like "A Customer" has NO idea what the inside of a city classroom looks like.

First of all, this is based on a true story -- it's not a fiction spun out of whole cloth by an airheaded liberal vistionary, as the sourpuss reviewer tries to suggest.

I grew up in a small, all-white town in New Hampshire, but have lived in Boston, Massachusetts, most of my adult life (I'm 56 years old). Iteach music in an inner city public pre-school in Roxbury-- the Harlem of Boston, Massachusetts. Our three-to-seven year-olds -- Black, Latino, Asian and White -- already speak and read very good, "proper" English, are learning to express themselves effectively in writing, and many are on the road to excellence. Most of our three-and-four-year-old bilingual children come to us pretty much fluent in both English and Spanish -- sometimes they help translate for their parents.

Not only that: because of the fact that my principal values the arts, each one of our children has music and dance class twice a week. In addition, all of our K2-First Grade classes have a chorus rehearsal once a week, and perform at least twice a year. They sing four-part rounds and simple two-and-three-part harmony, have sung in English, Hebrew, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Thai, French and Haitian Kreyol. By the time our children finish First Grade, even those who began with pitch recognition problems are singing fairly well on key, most sing very well, and we always have several who truly shine -- including a few with some of the most beautiful voices I have heard in my career as a music teacher and church musician. Which brings me to another point: a lot of our students come to school already singing well, because of experience from an early age singing in their home churches. Which has taught me that the "war zone" they're coming from -- and where I live as well -- has a lot more to offer than your cynical comments would suggest.

I have also taught music and academic subjects to all grades in an urban parochial with a 99% black population, and as with the children I teach now, I very rarely heard any "barbaric slang", though our children often spoke with a colorful dialect. (In the Catholic school many of the children were Haitian-American, most bilingual in English and Kreyol -- a few were trilingual, speaking French as well). I have taught older kids in both junior high and high school, and have subbed in Boston at all grade levels. I will certainly admit that the upper grades prevented more of a challenge, but I see the problems as more of a systemic failure than any fault of the children.

In fact, at whatever level I've ever taught, I've never found more than 10% of the kids to be problem students, but I certainly agree that the failure of school administrators (and politicians) to implement effective discipline in the schools does not make our job easy. I did quit my junior high job after seven years of frustration with the lack of administrative support for my attempts to assert discipline in my classroom, but I have to reiterate, as I said before, that the vast majority of my students were well-behaved, funny, enthusiastic, talented, and loveable. My chorus performed gospel music, jazz, pop classics, international folk music, and selections from Handel's Messiah and an Italian opera in four-part harmony, unsimplified, originally as written. The numbers ranged from 80 to 120 singers, whom I rehearsed unassisted several days a week in our music room.

It appears to me that it's you, and not the 5-star reviewers, who ought to be ashamed for your "cartoony" stereotypes of city children. Fight for stricter discipline and academic standards if that's what's needed in your system -- as we all have to do. Write your senators and representatives and tell them that the money spend in George Bush's trillion dollar war against Iraq would better spent in upgrading all of schools -- not just those in the city -- and a few more incidentals like our deteriorating bridge, levees, and woefully inadequate health care system. But if you really don't like the children you teach as much as your hateful and pessimistic words seem to indicate, maybe you should look for another job.

As for the film: I've seen it a couple of times on cable TV, and I came to Amazon to buy it so I can use it for enrichment at the music school I'm opening in my home so I continue developing my talented student musicians, beyond their work in the classroom, throughout their rest of their public school careers. I love the movie -- it's inspirational and moving. Is it coated with a little gloss? Most likely, as are most films from Hollywood. But the cast, the acting, the screenplay, and the music are great, and I pity the person who can only find things to tear down. Fortunately, that doesn't characterize the vast majority of these reviews.