Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

Mr. Holland’s Opus. Something about this film nags at me. It was one of my mother’s favorite movies and I’ve seen it – voluntarily – numerous times. I always tear up at least once, so it definitely succeeds at its tear jerking goals. But still, there’s something…..

Glenn Holland (Richard Dreyfuss) is a young-ish musician. Tired of playing clubs when he really wants to be a composer, he decides to make use of his “fall-back” degree and teach high school music for a few years to earn enough money to compose full time. As the film opens in the mid-sixties, Mr. Holland and his wife Iris (Glenne Headley) think they have it all figured out. Four years of his teaching plus her earnings will create that composing freedom of which he dreams. Well, as we know, things don’t always go as planned and those four years stretch into decades as Mr. Holland learns what it really means to be a teacher.

So what’s bugging me? The film is a clear tear jerker from the outset, with little bits of humor and pathos thrown in to make the mood light or somber and keep up the pace. It’s emotionally manipulative, but that’s what tear jerkers do – it can hardly be declared a fault. And it works – there are moments that bring a lump to the throat and a tear to the eye, even an occasional smile.

The plot is nothing earth shaking, with too easy emotional epiphanies and too frequent use of montage time period markers. It’s just a look at a man who spends too much time dreaming of bigger things while his actual contributions, successes and grand moments are sitting right in front of him. It’s all rather Hallmark Hall of Fame-ish, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Not particularly original or inherently interesting, but well served by a handful of really good performances. Richard Dreyfuss does well with the ups and downs of Mr. Holland through the years, giving a nice dry delivery to his comic moments and some heartfelt emotion to his more serious sequences. Glenne Headley is solid as his long suffering wife, doing a fine job of portraying a real woman who loves a man despite being frustrated by some of his actions. Fine supporting performances from the likes of Jay Thomas, William H. Macy (who is particularly funny in the early scenes), Olympia Dukakis and Alicia Witt round out the ensemble with considerable aplomb.

The easy epiphanies, both musical and emotional, are sort of part and parcel with this kind of movie. It isn’t really all that deep – it has a simple message to convey about savoring life’s beautiful moments and appreciating the good that can be done in one’s small world rather than always comparing them to an unattainable dream to which they will always pale. The passage of time and the make-up that ages the characters is typically unsubtle and played for any emotional mileage it might offer. The Vietnam War gets a bit of time, mid-life crises and school funding cutbacks, too. All part of a standard feeling package and all pretty well placed and certainly well put together by director Stephen Herek. Even the score is pretty fun, with the music reflecting each period as well as Mr. Holland’s personal tastes.

So what is it? What nags me? The production is fine, the actors do well, the story is successful in bringing on the tears and is well done for its genre. But I don’t really like like this movie and I’ve figured out why.

I don’t like Glenn Holland and I don’t care about his Opus.

It seems really simple, doesn’t it? It is, I suppose. If the main character, who is supposed to be sympathetic and relatable, turns out to be otherwise, the film, no matter the quality, carries some heavy baggage. Mr. Holland, on the surface, is the kind of character that feels good. He does good things, he affects people in a positive way, he makes a difference. But that’s really only on the surface. Deep down, from the opening moments to the closing credits, Glenn Holland is a selfish, whiny, pompous man with delusions of superiority and a constant need to relate everything to himself.

At the beginning of the film, he whines incessantly about how much he hates teaching, how he is making no difference in the lives of these kids, how he’s a composer, not a mere teacher. He refers to teaching as his “fall-back”, and despite a nice smack down about that term from principal Dukakis, continues to see it that way more or less for his entire career. Teaching, for this character, isn’t about his students, it’s about him. Each time he takes an interest in a particular student, at its core, it’s all about him. The clarinet player who has worked for years and hasn’t improved finally gets his attention because he feels guilty for making her cry. It isn’t about her; it’s about assuaging that guilt (this is also the site of one of the most painfully easy musical epiphanies). After years of treating his son badly because of something completely out of the child’s control, he makes it all better with a grandiose, self-serving public spectacle. Again, it’s all about him looking like a better parent, and again, it leads to a ridiculously easy resolution to a long term painful relationship. A relationship made painful to begin with because it was inconvenient for Mr. Holland and therefore a burden.

People love this man, yet he does little to deserve their admiration or devotion. He does his job – usually grudgingly – and goes above and beyond when it serves his ego, his wallet or his arrogantly grandiose idea that his vision of music is the center of the universe. What’s touching about the movie isn’t Glenn Holland; it’s the people around him. The people who get something from this man that he never had any intention of giving, gave unwillingly or didn’t know he gave at all. They were at the right place at the right time to fulfill his needs and benefited from that. That’s great for them, but for Mr. Holland the character, it’s not a good thing, not at all. It makes for a protagonist who is smug, emotionally dishonest and unlikable. Dreyfuss does with him the best anyone could probably do, but the character has only an honorable veneer. Underneath is all self-serving, perpetual dissatisfaction that he isn’t “allowed” to become the famous composer he fancies himself to be. I don’t feel sorry for him, I feel sorry for his family. I don’t admire his “good deeds”, I admire the determined people that manage to salvage some scraps from his arsenal of clichés and intellectual pabulum and get something resembling hope and inspiration. Those people are really the ones who raise the lump in the throat, bring the tear to the eye. They are, in fact, the ones that make me able to watch and almost enjoy the movie on occasion.

Glenn Holland not only does not represent what it means to be a teacher, he’s also not a likeable character. I don’t think Mr. Holland’s Opus is a horrible movie, but I do think that at its core it’s not honest about its main character. It’s watchable enough and provides enough emotional manipulation to get most people to shed a tear, but it will always nag me. It will nag me because I just can’t like Mr. Holland and as a result I don’t think I’ll ever really care about his Opus, but I can’t bring myself to actively dislike it because I do like the characters by whom he is surrounded. So it’s a stalemate. I don’t like him, I do like them. I’ll watch the movie once in a while, out of nostalgia and personal sentiment, but I don’t recommend it.


Recommended: No