Homeless to Harvard

Year: 2003 Rating: TV Overall Evaluation: 9.0 Significance Suppositions Story Style 9.0 / 10 10.0 / 10 8.5 / 10 10.0 / 10 Click HERE for evaluation criteria.

Style

This film would probably have been rated PG-13 for drug use and sexual discussions, maybe some mild language, and violence - but none of this is in the least bit gratuitous. In fact the scenes are quite toned down - they show you just enough to know what is going on and leave the rest to your own imagination (as good films should). It deals with the hardness of life without being too disturbing to watch. One very memorable scene highlights this - the father's daughter is being taken away by CPS, she is crying and begging him to stop them and the whole time he is washing a bent spoon and gathering other drug paraphernalia as he watches her be taken. Very poignant without having to show every little detail.

Story

This is a true story about a girl named Liz Murray. Liz was "raised" in a home with two unmarried parents who were both drug addicts. Neither parent really took care of her or her sister, they often went without proper food or clothing and were not admonished to go to school. Her mother was in and out of hospitals for schizophrenia, legal blindness, and drug addiction - finally she was diagnosed with Aids. Liz is taken away and put in a home, finally escaping at the age of 15 and hitting the streets where she stayed for the next 3 years. After her mother's death something clicked in Liz and she realized she needed to finish high school.

[SPOILER WARNING!]

She enrolled in and finished high school in two years (at the top of her class while homeless and "living" on a train), won a scholarship through the New York Times, and was accepted at Harvard University.

Suppositions

The film is very true-to-life and there is nothing that stretches credulity. It is, of course, an amazing story - it would be rather unbelievable if it were not true. There is no aggrandizement of Liz's story (she does not think what she did was all that heroic), it is told fairly objectively from Liz's point of view. The CPS workers were over-the-top but I can't say that they were not like that in real life - had this been a fictional story I would have suspected some bias there.

Significance

The message the movie is pretty obvious - believe in yourself and don't let circumstances rule your life. What I really appreciated was that this was not simply the heroic journey of a young girl, but it also showed how close she was to following in her friend's steps by just giving up on things ever getting better and just accepting them. This is a constant theme throughout the film. Having worked in that sector for a short time I can say that apathy is a huge (albeit understandable) problem for most of these folks. Unrealistic expectations are another - but in this story Liz never really seems to suffer from them. In her own words she "just worked hard to see what would happen." Excellently balanced message.