Revisiting and celebrating the work of Michelle Pfeiffer, the best actress of my lifetime.
Dangerous Minds was a box office hit and a bit of a cultural phenomenon in 1995. Much of that is owed to Michelle Pfeiffer's casual greatness in a film that's not nearly as good as she is in the starring role, and also to a monstrous hit single from the soundtrack, "Gangsta's Paradise." The song's video featured the goofy but totally awesome moment when a leather-jacketed, ice-cold Pfeiffer stares down '90s flash-in-the-pan Coolio.
As real-life teacher and former Marine LouAnne Johnson (the film was adapted from her book, My Posse Don't Do Homework), Pfeiffer crafts a character informed by Johnson's tenure as a teacher of at-risk students, in a poverty-stricken school district in California. The film, though, takes a complicated story and essentially turns it into another white savior narrative. As always, Pfeiffer makes the most of it, anyway.
The real Miss Johnson used not [Bob] Dylan but the lyrics of rap songs to get the class interested in poetry… What has happened in the book-to-movie transition of LouAnne Johnson's book is revealing. The movie pretends to show poor black kids being bribed into literacy by Dylan and candy bars, but actually it is the crossover white audience that is being bribed with mind-candy in the form of safe words by the two Dylans. What are the chances this movie could have been made with Michelle Pfeiffer hooking the kids on the lyrics of Ice Cube or Snoop Doggy Dogg?
It's liberties like this that ultimately left critics unimpressed, even if audiences were inspired. Even the real LouAnne has issues with the film, many of which she's detailed over the years. Despite her complaints with how the filmmakers altered her story, she still finds the end product inspiring,
I cry every time I see it. I think it inspired a lot of people. I can whine about the changes, but overall it had a good effect. Some young people got to become actors who might not have had a chance.
It's also worth noting how wonderfully Pfeiffer and George Dzundza worked together in their roles as old friends turned fellow teachers. Their friend-chemistry is so natural, so lived in, that it makes you feel there's a world of stories and experiences between them, enough to fill several movies. This was beautifully expressed during their happy hour scene, as these two optimistic pessimists commiserate over life's struggles. It's a beautiful moment, and Pfeiffer masterfully opens up windows into LouAnne's past in a way that reveals her struggles as well as her perseverance.
No matter how often the film might veer into treacly territory, there's still a real electricity in the classroom scenes, with great chemistry between Pfeiffer and several of the actors playing her students—many of whom were actually non-actors at the time. She and Bruklin Harris (Callie) create an especially resonant bond, one that seems rooted more in mutual respect and equal footing than most teacher-student relationships. Ultimately, it's those moments, between LouAnne and her students, that keep bringing me back to Dangerous Minds over the years.
It's good to have you and Michelle back. I remember enjoying Dangerous Minds when I watched it back in the 90's. I haven't seen it in a very long time so I can't say how it has stood the test of time...but what I do remember is some really fine acting from Pfeiffer. I would like to have seen more sides of her character (ie., love or family interests--but like you I can never get enough of Pfeiffer.
ReplyDeleteI have read that a romantic element with Andy Garcia was left on the cutting room floor so they could focus on her interaction with the students. If they'd left those scenes in, Dangerous Minds may have been even more interesting to watch.
I enjoyed it back in the day also, then it lost some of its shine for me over the years, but, interestingly enough, I've come around to finding so many sweet, simple pleasures in the film of late, that I'm back to kind of loving it again. As trite as it might be at times, I think its heart is in the right place. And, let's be real, it's a wonderful performance from Michelle.
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