Mr. Holland’s Opus Review (1995)
Director: Stephen Herek
Writer: Patrick Sheane Duncan
Starring: Richard Dreyfuss, Glenne Headly, Olympia Dukakis, William H. Macy, Jay Thomas, Jean Louisa Kelly, Alicia Witt, Terrence Howard
Release Date: December 29, 1995
Runtime: 2 hours 23 minutes
I first saw Mr. Holland’s Opus sometime in late 2002 or 2003, in a high school math class of all places. My teacher was a man named Mr. Tinkler, and he was the kind of old school teacher that a lot of students didn’t like because he his class was hard and he held people accountable. I always liked him; great teacher. He was one of those teachers who actually gave a damn whether you learned anything, which is rarer than it should be. I mention this because watching Mr. Holland’s Opus in Mr. Tinkler’s classroom, of all places, gave the film a context that has stuck with me ever since. Here was a movie about a dedicated teacher who a lot of students probably did not appreciate in the moment, being shown by a dedicated teacher who a lot of students probably did not appreciate in the moment. It landed differently because of that.
Revisiting it now, Mr. Holland’s Opus is every bit as good as I remembered. Better, honestly.
The film follows Glenn Holland (Dreyfuss), a musician and composer who takes a job teaching high school music in 1965 with the intention of it being temporary; it’s a way to pay the bills while he works on his real dream of writing a symphony. Thirty years later, he is still there, still teaching, and his opus remains unfinished. The film spans those three decades and charts not just Holland’s career but his marriage, his relationship with his deaf son Cole, and the generations of students who passed through his classroom and were changed by him whether they realized it at the time or not.
Richard Dreyfuss was nominated for an Academy Award for this role, and he deserved it. This is the best performance of his career, and I say that as someone who thinks he has had a lot of great ones. What makes it remarkable is the range it requires. We spend thirty years with Glenn Holland and watch him go from a young man full of ambition and impatience to a middle aged man who has quietly made peace with the life he ended up with rather than the one he planned for. Dreyfuss plays every stage of that journey with an authenticity that never feels like acting. There are moments in this film, particularly the scenes with his son Cole, that are genuinely gutting.
The supporting cast is strong across the board. Glenne Headly is terrific as Iris, Holland’s wife, and carries a lot of the film’s emotional weight in scenes that could have easily been reduced to the thankless supporting spouse role. Jay Thomas, Olympia Dukakis and William H. Macy do good work in their respective roles, and a young Terrence Howard shows up early in the film in a small but memorable part. I’ll give a shout out to Alicia Witt for her brief role in the film as one of the first students Holland really mentors; I found her hot the first time I watched it, and still do.
But the performance that most people overlook when they talk about this film is Jean Louisa Kelly as the talented and aspiring singer Rowena Morgan. Kelly is only in a portion of the film but she makes every scene count, and the dynamic between her character and Holland is one of the most interesting and complicated relationships in the movie. Her role is relatively brief in the grand scheme of a two and a half hour film that spans three decades, but she leaves an impression that outlasts her screen time considerably. She performed a stellar rendition of Someone to Watch Over Me.
The ending of Mr. Holland’s Opus is one of the best endings in American cinema, at least for someone who did and does appreciate teachers (at least the good ones). I won’t describe it for anyone who has not seen it, but I will say that if it does not get to you then I am not sure what will. It earns every moment of it because Herek and Dreyfuss have spent over two hours making sure you are fully invested in this man’s life before they ask you to feel the full weight of it.
Some people find it sentimental or manipulative. Those people are wrong.
Watching this again made me think of old Mr. Tinkler, and after a quick Google search I found out he died a decade ago at 84. So RIP to a great teacher, and a great man.
Mr. Holland’s Opus gets a five out of five: EXCELLENT.
