School Ties

What I liked very much about “School Ties” was that the viewer understands the reasons for almost every character, even if they do evil things like Dillon when he cheats on the test. The movie doesn’t divide the characters into “good” and “evil” from the beginning, although throughout the movie it becomes obvious that some students are really racist and not fair towards David. Nevertheless, Dillon makes a good “antagonist” because you can actually identify with his situation and his thoughts about David. In general, it tells a lot about prejudices and religious conflicts in the 1950’s which is also depicted in small details such as David praying at night because he wanted to and also had to play the football game in order to keep his scholarship during the day. In general, I think the actors who play the main characters do a very good job in displaying the feelings and emotions. What I didn’t like so much is that the plot is, from my opinion, quite predictable and not very profound. Also, the other characters besides Green and Dillon do not have enough space to develop in my opinion; they just fulfill “classmate stereotypes” too much in my opinion.

This movie tells David Green's story. This guy is a very handsome and talented football player who comes from a poor background. He has the chance to enter in a prestigious preparatory school full of spoiled students , which gave him a scholarship. David have everything going for him, except that he is Jewish. This story happens in the 50's so the students in St Matthew are still racists. When the students discovers that David is a Jew, they cut all their friendships off. When the day of the history exam occurred, someone cheated, and the teacher discovered it. He decided to flunk everyone if the cheater doesn't confess. David saw Dillon cheating, but Dillon accused him of being the cheater. The class council met to make a decision... School Ties shows us from an interesting point of view how it was to be Jew in the 50's. In fact, this is not because the war was over that everyone immediately stopped being anti-Semite. This is only in 1970 that racism became forbidden. This is a really realistic movie, the story could perfectly be a true story. That makes us feel a lot more concerned about it. This is a perfect movie to learn about post-war Jew's situation.

School Ties deals with the differences between 2 religions, being Jewish or Christian. This main topic explains every characters’ behavior within so many situations, just to make more evident why one religion is better or more acceptable than the other. Since the beginning of the movie, everything was about to be clear for me, but when the coach told David to remain discreet with the other guys I realized something was hidden or something must be kept in secret. Then I got the picture about David's religion. Every student had the same idea of Jewish people, they considered them as meek and without any chance to become successful in life. But Jesus! everything turned into a different way, because David became more popular than Dillon who was the jock and privileged guy with a 5 generation Harvard background in his family, David went steady with one of the cutest girls even after she decided to break with him because "he lied to her". At the end when Dillon cheated on the exam and everyone was blaming David, Rip confessed that David didn't, he had balls to admit who the real cheater was, leaving behind all prejudices and doing things in a fair manner.