Glenn Holland's journey

Every year, TCM's 31 Days of Oscar serves up some "newer", at least in the context of TCM, movies, that I haven't necessarily seen before. One such movie that's 30 years old now and that I hadn't seen is Mr. Holland's Opus. So, as always, I recorded it and eventually got around to watching it and putting up this review here.

Richard Dreyfuss stars as Glenn Holland. As the movie opens, it's the start of the 1964 school year and Glenn is a young musician and would-be composer. However, as any musician or composer would tell you, trying to make a living doing either of those things is difficult, so a lot of college music majors go on to take jobs teaching music. (My sister is an example: some years back she went to a college reunion which included questions about what jobs in music the assembled graduates had; by far the most people stood up for "being a music teacher". She still gives music lessons.) Dreyfus is taking a job at Kennedy High School in Portland, Oregon under principal Helen Jacobs (Olympia Dukakis). Jacobs is understanding, while taking a much more businesslike attitude is her vice-principal, Gene Wolters (William H. Macy).

Mr. Holland teaches his students the basics of music, while trying to compose a symphony at home with his young loving wife Iris (Glenne Headly) and becoming friends with the gym teacher, Bill Meister (Jay Thomas). Mr. Holland teaches a bunch of different types of students, many of whom aren't very good at music, such as clarinetist Gertrude Lang, or a kid who needs a credit to be able to stay on the football and wrestling teams. Mr. Holland resorts to unorthodox methods, such as showing how pop tunes of the day are often taken from classical themes. This causes trouble with Mr. Wolters, which is going to be a recurring theme throughout the movie. Mr. Holland's story focuses on about three or four stints during his career, with montages showing the intervening years for the skipped-over years at school, although all the major historical events show up.

At home, Glenn knocks up Iris, who eventually gives birth to their son Cole. When Cole is about a year old, there's a parade where Glenn is leading the marching band and Iris and Cole are watching. A fire engine sounds its extremely loud horn, causing everybody to cover their ears -- except poor little Cole, who doesn't even cry. Tests at the doctor's office reveal that Cole has lost 90% of his hearing. Having a deaf kid is tough for any parent, but for a man whose whole life is music, it seems even worse, and a large part of the movie also deals with Glenn's consistently estranged relationship with his son, with Dad not even bothering to learn American Sign Language properly. Things finally start to change, however, when John Lennon gets killed and Cole reveals he knows fully well who Lennon was and what his impact on popular culture is.

And then we get to the present day. Schools are facing increasing budget pressures, although the movie doesn't mention how much of this is due to prioritizing the needs of "special needs" students, instead taking a 1990s-standard view that schools are chronically underfunded. Jacobs had retired many years back, so for the last 15-plus years the principal has been Mr. Wolters. He takes this chance to cut the school's arts and music programs, which is going to cost Mr. Holland his job. Is Mr. Holland going to get a chance to live happily ever after?

My title for this blog post references an old Lionel Barrymore movie called One Man's Journey. I can forgive the writers and everyone else involved with Mr. Holland's Opus for not knowing that movie since it was one of the RKO movies that Merian Cooper gained the rights to and was out of circulation for some 40 years by the time Mr. Holland's Opus was made. TCM got the rights to it in about 2005, and it tells the story of a doctor (Barrymore) who spends 30 years ministering to the poor people of a small midwestern town, sacrificing his chance at a prestigious research career. At the end, Barrymore's doctor gets a celebration of his career in a very sentimental finale. Mr. Holland's Opus, however might outdo One Man's Journey with its own mawkish ending. And that is part of why so many of the reviews I read had issues with Mr. Holland's Opus. It's a well-acted movie, but boy is the plot formulaic and the ending incredibly sappy.