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Music of the Heart

Music of the Heart

Drama · Music · 1999

After Roberta Guaspari separates from her husband, she receives encouragement from her mother to take up a job of a music teacher at the Central Park East School in East Harlem.

Movie details

Music of the Heart

“She gave them a gift they could never imagine. They gave the system a fight it would never forget.”

1999 Drama · Music 2h 4m

Critical arithmetic

The consensus, allegedly.

IMDb

6.7 / 10

13.5K votes

Rotten Tomatoes

64 %

Tomatometer

Metacritic

54 / 100

Metascore

TMDB

6.7 / 10

Community rating

External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.

After Roberta Guaspari separates from her husband, she receives encouragement from her mother to take up a job of a music teacher at the Central Park East School in East Harlem.

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over Music of the Heart?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

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Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

Wes Craven

Written by

Pamela Gray

Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep

Roberta

Aidan Quinn

Aidan Quinn

Brian

Angela Bassett

Angela Bassett

Janet

Gloria Estefan

Gloria Estefan

Isabel

Cloris Leachman

Cloris Leachman

Assunta

Josh Pais

Josh Pais

Dennis

Jane Leeves

Jane Leeves

Dorothea

Court is in session

Put Music of the Heart on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Prestige Tourist

“Sincerity is not manipulation.”

The film risks embarrassment to make emotion communal, and that openness is harder than fashionable detachment.

The prosecution The Adrenaline Seeker

“The strings are showing.”

Every cue tells you exactly what to feel and when, leaving sentiment to do the work character should have done.