Of bus rides and movies

I'm back in Kuantan for around a week for the Hari Raya break. Interestingly enough, the 6-hour bus ride this time turned out to be a quiet one, but past 7pm, 1st time seeing the breaking of fast in the bus, when the driver switched on the lights and left them on for a while so that those who were fasting can have their meals. Well, something different from my previous 2 bus rides, which consisted of conversations; one with an aunty visiting her niece in Klang during the bus ride to KL, another with a mother and son while stopping by in Mersing for an early dinner.

On a separate note, I remembered a movie we watched during YA some time back, titled "Freedom Writers". It was based on a true story. It's amazing how 1 person can make a difference in the lives of others by continuing to believe in their potential.

Plot
The film opens with footage of the Los Angeles riots of 1992 and introduces Eva (April Lee Hernández), a Latina whose father was wrongly arrested for supposed retaliation to a drive-by shooting. She is initiated in a gang, and only goes to Wilson High School because her choice was to either go to boot camp or go to school. The Long Beach high school and its area are the place of a gang war, where hatred and racism is abound. Meanwhile, naive first-time teacher Erin Gruwell (Hilary Swank) gets a job teaching freshman English at Wilson High School. Her first day at school is a shock to her, as she sees a fight almost break out in her classroom and a full scale gang battle at the school. Her students do not obey her and continuously talk back to her.

One night, Eva and a Cambodian refugee, Sindy (Jaclyn Ngan), find themselves in the same convenience store. Another student, Grant Rice (Armand Jones), is frustrated at losing an arcade game and demands a refund from the owner. When he storms out, Eva's boyfriend attempts a driveby shooting on him, accidentally killing Sindy's boyfriend. As Eva is a witness, she must testify at court; she intends to protect her own kind in her testimony.

At school, Gruwell intercepts a racist drawing of one of her students, and uses it to teach them about the Holocaust. Despite various challenges, she gradually begins to earn their trust, and buys them composition books to record a diary, 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, and a transformation is especially visible in one of her students, Marcus (Jason Finn). She invites several Holocaust survivors to talk with her class about their experiences, and takes them on a field trip to the Museum of Tolerance. Meanwhile, her unorthodox teaching methods are scorned by her colleagues and racist department chair Margaret Campbell (Imelda Staunton). The next year comes, and Gruwell teaches her class again for sophomore year.

In class, when reading The Diary of a Young Girl, or Anne Frank's diary, they decide to invite Miep Gies over to talk to them. Initially, the task seemed impossible, but after working together to organise a fundraising event which gained publicity in the local media. They raised enough money to send her over, and she tells them her experiences hiding Anne Frank. When Marcus tells her that she is his hero, she denies it, claiming she was merely doing the right thing. Her denial causes Eva to rethink lying during her testimony. When she testifies, she finally breaks down and tells the truth. Despite being assaulted by her own gang members later for betraying them, she and Sindy became good friends in class.

Meanwhile, Gruwell gives her students a project to write their diary in the form of a book. She compiles the projects into a book and names it The Freedom Writer Diaries, after the Freedom Riders. Unfortunately, her commitment to the students took a toll on her relationship with her husband, who divorces her. To make matters worse, Margaret tells her she cannot teach her kids for their junior year, intending to hand over the class to another teacher from a higher up class, but practises discrimination. Despite the circumstances, she fights this decision, eventually persevering to convince the district education superintendent to allow her to teach her kids' junior and senior year. The film ends with a note that Gruwell successfully brought many of her students to graduation and college.