MOVIE REVIEW: Making the Grade

Documentary set in Ireland, we travel through the grades of piano students and their teachers, from the outright beginners to those who are about to take the final tests of their piano adventure.Â Ken Wardrop travels around Ireland and meets some teachers and students, also their families, who all have their own reasons for learning to tickle the ivories.

I’ve stated before that just because a film is from my homeland doesn’t mean it gets a free ride in the reviews.Â If anything I have to view them in a more heavily spotlighted way because I don’t want you seeing some of the trash that comes out, and there is a fair amount of it too, from this country.Â In saying that I do try to inform you of the same thing from other countries.Â Documentaries are harder to review in a way as they are not scripted, and the camera work is also very different to entertainment movies.

Making the Grade is a very sweet and very pleasant documentary.Â There are no murderers revealed, no big shocks about man’s inhumanity to his fellow man, we’re not travelling across our solar system, and there are very few shocks.Â I would happily sit down again and watch the film, either in the cinema or at home, and it would be a very relaxing movie to watch again.Â As we travel through the grades from the pre grade to the final steps we meet some great characters.Â The personalities are nearly as big as the silver screen itself, and a lot of the children act as though they are 9 going on 75.Â The humour in the film is what struck me the most, I did laugh a lot, and that was really nice.

It’s the niceness of the film that is both the greatest asset and the biggest downfall.Â It’s almost just one note through the whole thing.Â The student is introduced and their family, then we meet their teacher, then we find their reasons for learning the piano.Â It’s that way throughout.

The one story that hit me most, and maybe it’s my own differently able body, is the girl with Cerebral Palsy who gave up doing the grades but yet continued with the lessons.Â This part of the story brought a tear to my eye as her true determination and spirit flooded the screen, it was as though the continued non graded learning helps her more than anything else.Â Some of the teachers are a little bit lacking in personality but one teacher who points out that she has no formal education, of any type, really makes up for that in buckets.

Some of you will never get the chance to see this on a big screen with an audience, and I think that’s a shame, this is a film that works better with people around you.Â Although it’s a middle of the road film it really is charming.Â You’re not going to walk away from this film thinking that it’s changed your world, you may, like some I sat beside during the filming, think about taking some lessons.Â This is a documentary that if you have any musical notions, or have learned the piano, or other instruments, that you’ll enjoy.Â For me the charm and sweetness of the film outweighs the shortcomings and lack of impact so I still enjoyed sitting through it.

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