There is a counterpoint to her decision. Eleanor (Kim Howard), a young local girl with a baby, takes her child in her arms and jumps out of her project window. Friends and neighbors gather at a makeshift shrine of flowers and Polaroids, giving Eleanor the attention now that she needed yesterday.
The thread connecting the girls' lives is their marching band, the Jackie Robinson Steppers. It is a real band, something we don't have to be told after we see them. I learn that McKay got the idea for his film when he saw the Steppers in a parade, and began to wonder about the lives of some of its members. The band provides a focus, discipline, pride. It is very good. And the bandmaster provides a friendly but firm male presence for young people who often come from fatherless homes.
Interesting, the differences between this film and "crazy/beautiful," another new film about young people about the same age. Both are good movies. "crazy/beautiful" has an established star (Kirsten Dunst), more plot, a more showy and entertaining sort of angst. It seems more sure of exactly what it wants to tell us. "Our Song" is not on the same fast track; it ambles, observes, meditates, has patience. Most audiences will connect more with "crazy/beautiful," which does the lifting for them. "Our Song" requires us to look and listen to these girls, and make our own connections.
Example: Lanisha, the Kerry Washington character, has asthma. One day she starts to have an attack, and her friend takes her to the emergency room, where the receptionist of course exhibits the usual blindness toward a health crisis while demanding insurance forms, identification and so on. In a different kind of film, this scene would have built up into a dramatic climax--"E.R." lite. "Our Song" knows that things like this happen every day, that Lanisha will be frightened but will survive, that life goes on, that emergency rooms are more familiar to teenage girls from this neighborhood than to Kirsten Dunst's friends in Malibu.
"Our Song" is content with the rhythms of life, and so performs one of the noble functions of the movies, which is to give us the opportunity to empathize with characters not like ourselves.
Note: Because "Our Song" deals with the daily reality of many girls under 17, it has been rated R by the MPAA, so that they can be prevented from learning from the movie's insights.
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