‘Wonders’ Celebrates a Tough Teacher

In Allan Miller’s Oscar-nominated “Small Wonders,” we get to watch and hear an interracial army of children learning violin, playing foreign music (Bach), doing it in school as well as in defiance of relentless budget cutting and full-frontal assaults on the National Endowment for the Arts. Is this a personal attack on Jesse Helms?

Nothing so electrifying, unfortunately. “Small Wonders” is, however, a very pleasant film about Roberta Guaspari-Tzavaras, who, in 1990, refused to give up her in-school violin program when her position was eliminated by the New York City Board of Education. Choosing instead to raise private money to keep it going, and thereby providing an invaluable service to the schoolchildren of East Harlem, she now directs a program so popular there’s an annual lottery for would-be violinists.

The movie relates all of this to us at the beginning, however, so the survival of the program is not at issue in the film. There is no dramatic crisis about whether strings will stay in these particular East Harlem alternative schools, or about student interest. We watch instead the mechanics of the program--the lottery, the rehearsals, a local recital, the playing of the national anthem at a New York Knicks game and the climactic concert at Carnegie Hall--not all of which are so riveting or edifying.

Guaspari-Tzavaras herself, however, is a somewhat startling figure. Although obviously aware of Miller’s camera--she plays to it, or away from it--she comes off as an uncompromising disciplinarian with a rigorous, no-nonsense approach to playing the violin: If you can’t devote yourself to the instrument--practice, make rehearsals, don’t make excuses--then you don’t belong in her class. Yes, she’s blunt and occasionally unpleasant: One girl, who chooses a soccer game over a concert rehearsal, is summarily banished from the concert. Those who feel that teachers have gotten soft and undemanding should check out Guaspari-Tzavaras.

But she’s also devoted to her program and her students, and it shows. And when they do mount the stage at Carnegie Hall--along with such eminent fiddlers as Isaac Stern, Midori, Michael Tree, Arnold Steinhardt and Itzhak Perlman--there is real electricity and little doubt that her students are getting something special and life-affirming out of an education system that so often fails.

“Small Wonders” is, of course, a propaganda film, one as uncompromising as its subject about the value of arts funding in the schools. But when you consider that this is a country that never cuts football but always cuts music, this film should be required viewing.

* MPAA rating: G. Times guidelines: OK for all ages.

‘Small Wonders’

A Four Oaks Foundation production, released by Miramax Films. Director Allan Miller. Producer Susan Kaplan. Executive producer Walter Scheuer. Cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau. Editor Allan Miller. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.

* Exclusively at the Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 274-6869.