Making the Grade 2017
I don’t think I had ever heard of this movie before I saw it at Dollar Tree mixed in with a bunch of discounted horror movies, but I looked it up on Rotten Tomatoes while in the store and it had a 100% rating, which is amazing except that it is based on 9 reviews (mostly in 2018, when it seems to have had its biggest release, though nominally it is a 2017 movie). The movie doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry, but even so, I paid my dollar. The movie was made in Ireland, sponsored by their Council of the Arts, and is a documentary about people giving and taking piano lessons in preparation for exams at different levels, called grades, that go through Grade 8, at which point you can play complicated pieces proficiently. A bigger, more interesting and impactful project might track some people through a few of the grades, which can take a lifetime or be reached in your teens. Some of the students are adults, most are younger, some taking it very seriously, some as part of an overstuffed portfolio of student activities. We never see how anyone does at the exams, though we see some of the students at the exams. Instead the movie rides along the surface, introducing us to a lot of students and teachers, showing a lot of diversity. A few of the teachers reappear with different students as the movie progresses with segments from Grade 1 to Grade 8. At only 87 minutes, this approach works. It is nice spending time listening to everyday Irish people talk and as they demonstrate increasingly higher skills. There is no narrator, just people talking about learning or teaching and why they are doing it. It is a nice movie, easy and pleasant to watch. There could have been more to it, but maybe this broad based survey is enough.
The blu-ray I got had virtually no extras and was made on a BD-R disc, which seems to be common for the distributor, Gravitas. The case itself is quite solid though.
Written: 03 Oct 2020
Owned on: Blu-ray