Dreyfus's Triumph

Rating: 10/10 (16 June 2007)

With all of the trashy, throw-away, so-called "stars" out there, a small handful of folks have always stood out on the basis of sheer acting talent. Richard Dreyfus is among them.
I first got turned on to him with THE GOODBYE GIRL, and something just clicked. THIS was the Real Thing! After JAWS, I started looking for more... and promptly found a quirky, offbeat offering, THE APPRENTICESHIP OF DUDDY KRAVITZ.
Three wildly different roles... and all handled to perfection. THIS MAN IS AN ACTOR! After a succession of other roles, Dreyfus hit THE role, the one he can always be proud of... playing Glen Holland, the reluctant music teacher who came to love the profession that life and circumstances had forced him into.
The greatest gift MR. HOLLAND'S OPUS gave to me was an appreciation for a person in my own life... for the first time in several decades, I thought of my personal Mr. Holland, band director Herbert Rifkind of Chicago Vocational High School. Mr. Holland and Herb Rifkind couldn't have been more different people; Herb had been part of the Marine Corps Band in Washington, and tho he'd moderated the military approach to one more suitable for dealing with high school kids, his band was a tight and precise machine, carefully trained with patience and love.
Holland's "marching buddy" practice, and the sound of the drummer's Street Beat winding up at the start of the parade instantly took me back across decades... during halftime in a football game in Soldier Field in Chicago, steering 40 pounds of reluctant brass Sousaphone through a high wind while maintaining precise marching interval and cadence in the ankle deep mud, all the while struggling for perfection on the bass obbligato of "The Stars and Stripes Forever"...
We didn't do it for glory, or even for ourselves... tho we'd have never admitted it back then, the band did it right to keep from letting Mr. Rifkind down. Holland and Rifkind were alike in that way; he was our best friend on the faculty, and the one that we now remember with a special fondness.
The Rifkinds and Hollands of this world probably have the most profound effect on their students of any high school faculty member; they give their kids something of VALUE that lasts a lifetime; an appreciation for music, and the self discipline that's needed to master a musical instrument or navigate life.
Holland and Rifkind are very special people... simple men, doing a job that they love, but a job that affects every student they ever encounter for a lifetime. It was time that somebody made a movie about these unsung heros.
Dreyfus did it RIGHT.