A very good saga of a music teacher dealing with the changes in the decades

Rating: 10/10 (11 December 2006)

This is almost like a saga in four acts.
In the 1950s (Act 1), Glenn Holland starts off life as a music teacher at Kennedy High School, with his wife, Iris, on his side. He is told by the high school administrator to start a marching band for his high school although he was not yet trained in marching band techniques. He had to learn the techniques quickly.
At that point, Glenn befriends a Black bass drummer of the band who could not hear the beat during the time the band rehearsed the "Stars and Stripes Forever". He eventually makes that drummer find his beat, and he does!
But in the parade scene, as the school marching band passes by (with Glenn acting like Professor Harold Hill in the "Music Man"), Iris has already became pregnant and has a baby named Cole, as both were parade spectators. The fire engine that goes by after the marching band sets off a deafening sound of its horn that lasts for about 15-20 seconds--right in front of them. Looks like the simulated din was 150 decibels and she didn't know what to do with that noise. That confusion caused her not to block Cole's ears from the fire engine horn blast....but as the camera does a close-up shot on Cole, as well as the sound editing---you realize that Cole's ears ended up permanently damaged because of that one-time noise exposure.
Not until Glenn and Iris realize that Cole could not hear sounds pretty well and could not respond to his parents' calls that they realized something was wrong and they took him to an audiologist. The audiologist tells them the very bad news---Cole is 85% deaf.
Glenn responds by holding one class talk at the high school about Beethoven and his bout with complete deafness.
As the movie goes on to the 1960s/1970s (Act II), the black bass drummer who found his beat is drafted to fight in the Vietnam War, but the movie doesn't mention it until Glenn gets a letter saying that he was killed fighting in Vietnam. He then goes to his funeral to meet the surviving parents but he doesn't know it was a military funeral until the banging volleys from a 21-gun salute go off.
As the movie goes on to the 1980s (Act III), Cole (now growing up from baby boy to preteen son) is trying to go on with his life dealing with his hearing impairment by learning sign language, and Glenn wanted to do a big singing project, which because of budget tightening was reduced to doing a short Broadway revue honoring George Gershwin. He then befriends a very talented singing lady, Rowena Morgan (played by Jean Louisa Kelley) after the revue was a smashing success..but the friendship ended when Rowena said that she wanted to go to New York to start a Broadway career. Then, Glenn helps Cole feel the final part of the last movement of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony by introducing special lights that move to the beat of the music...as well as a large amplified speaker.
In the final part of the movie, the 1990s (Act IV), Glenn finds out that his favorite program at Kennedy High School that he did for about 30 years--music--was going to be accessed by administrative budget cuts. This angered Glenn so much that his long-kept secret was revealed as his music tenure at Kennedy was about to end. This came in his big "opus"---his final public performance at the school, as he conducted his own "American Symphony" , which featured some of the high school's alumni as well as active students in his last orchestral performance as a conductor. The work combined elements of classical, pop, and rock and I described it as a short soundtrack to his very strong devotion to not only music teaching--but music per se.