Music of the Heart | Meryl Streep, Angela Bassett

Music of the Heart | Meryl Streep, Angela Bassett | Reviewers Are Missing The Message

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Music of the Heart

	Music of the Heart Meryl Streep, Angela Bassett Miramax/ Walt Disney Home Video, 2000 average customer review:based on 87 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Wonderful

This is one of the best films I have ever saw in my life. It made me cry, laugh and really think. I think everyone needs to see this film you won't regret it.

Reviewers Are Missing The Message

This movie is NOT about a classroom or about proper English or about teaching methods. It's about taking the passion of something you love and being successful with it enough to make others love it just as much. It's about creating culture in an area of society that had none.

My mother taught piano, organ, and violin. In the 1920's she had her own girl's orchestra in the Chicago area. She always kept the attitude of "I'm here if you want to learn, but I'm not going to push you." Boy, do I wish she had! I cannot play any instrument and regret her NOT making me take lessons when I had the opportunity. But she's been deceased for over 30 years and when I watch someone play with proficiency I kick myself.

The children of Harlem were given an Opportunity (with a capital 'O') and I applaud the writers, producers, and directors who brought this to our attention with an excellent film.

I laughed and I cried. I hope you will, too. To all who read this, if you like music and inspiration, I recommend seeing this movie. And, I hope you see the depth of the true message and not the trivial details others have complained about.

It didn't matter to me if the school classroom was not portrayed as it really may be in Harlem. It didn't matter to me if Roberta was strict or made her children practice (if it's a true story, then so be it).

The movie moved me. I felt the pride of the parents whose children excelled in this TRUE story of accomplishment.

Gail Gupton, Author: The 31-Day Diet of Spiritual Enlightenment and Seekers of Truth

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"Extras" listed on DVD cover NOT on DVD!!

I don't have anything to add to the other comments about the film itself, but I was flummoxed by the fact that my DVD didn't include several of the "extra" features listed on the box. I don't miss Ms. Estevan's video, nor the bits of "wisdom" but I'd have liked to see the deleted scenes and more of the "behind the scenes at Carnegie." The Fiddlefest was, I know, quite a wild time with the audience thrilled by the combination of students and pros, and the pros were deeply impressed by the students, by all accounts, so to have seen how it all came together would have been nice. I also don't like paying for things I don't actually get.

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Proficient if somewhat anodyne movie

While based on reality this is not a notably realistic movie and makes everything look glossier and easier than I am sure it was in the real world .
Meryl Streep plays Roberta Guispari whose husband leaves her for a younger woman .Needing a job she tries to persuade Janet Williams ( Angela Bassett) the principal of an East Harlem school,to take her on a violin teacher in a special programme and eventually succeeds thanks to an impromptu recital by her two young sons .( It would not have altered my decision -but then we would not have had a movie )
She faces resistance ,both from the pupils and one parent in particular ,who loudly avers that she is a meddling white liberal ,that dead white man's music is not relevant and that no black classical composers have ever existed .( The ranting ignoramus has clearly never heard of Samuel Coleridge Taylor whose oratorio The Song of Hiawatha is still a staple of choral societies in the UK .)
The movie unfolds ,in somewaht episodic fashion ,treating of Roberta's personal and professional life; the success of the programme and its threat of being terminated by funders concluding in a Carnegie Hall fundraising concert)
Its sentimental without being overly schmalty but does tend to make all the students too glossy --well groomed ,speaking excellent English and with supportive parents .Such do exist but are by no means in the kind of majority we see in the movie .It is unrealistic and this undercuts the very real achievement of the actual Ms Guispari in driving the programme over so many years .
Still the music is good -especially the final concert -and the peformances from Streep ,Bassett and Cloris Leachaman as Streep's mother are admirable .Anonymous but capable direction is in the hands of horror maestro Wes Craven -his first movie outside that genre

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