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Arguably superior to the 1999 Miramax drama
Music of the Heart starring Meryl Streep as violin teacher Roberta Guaspari, this Oscar-nominated documentary by Allan Miller has a focus and spirit the former lacks. Miller introduced audiences to Guaspari (who actually goes by Guaspari-Tzavaras) in 1995, drawing attention to the inspiring story of her youth music program in East Harlem. A divorced mother and dedicated instructor, Guaspari-Tzavaras offered instruction on the violin to the community's public schools before her position was eliminated from the budget in 1990. She responded by creating a nonprofit learning project so popular that kids of all ages could only get in via a lottery system.
Small Wonders captures Guaspari-Tzavaras's extraordinary commitment to the program as she drags piles of violins from school to school, offers private lessons, gets tough with indifferent parents, and conducts class after class of children who could make your ears bleed with their squawking fiddles. The results of her efforts have long been noted for boosting students' self-esteem and a sense of the possible, all the more so when Guaspari-Tzavaras brings her violin army to play the national anthem at a Knicks game and, even more improbably, organizes a benefit in which her charges jam with Isaac Stern and Itzhak Perlman. Miller captures the joys and agonies of learning, from the tyke who weeps at the thought of hard work to the adolescent who finds practicing the violin has helped her organize her life. All in all, this is a remarkable story and Guaspari-Tzavaras is an exciting subject.
--Tom Keogh
