Review: Heart of Stone (2009)

[Scott Mendelson]

Heart of Stone
2009
90 minutes
Not Rated

by Scott Mendelson

Note - this film just won the Audience Award for Best Documentary
Feature at the 2009 Slamdance film festival.

Heart of Stone is, on the surface, a documentary version of that oft-
told tale of the inspirational inner-city principal bringing order and
hope to a blighted urban school district. That so many stories exist
both in fictional and non-fictional realms is a sad commentary on the
state of public education in this country. But this film (originally
titled It's Hard to Be an Indian) has more on its mind than the feel-
good story that we all know so well.

A token amount of plot - In the 1960s, the Weequahic section of Newark
New Jersey was mostly a first generation Jewish community. Spurred on
by bitter memories of the Holocaust and the Great Depression, the
Jewish majority graduated more PhDs from Weequahic than anywhere in
the country (their most famous alumni was novelist Philip Roth).
Following the 1967 Newark riots, most of the Jewish community fled,
leaving behind only the poor black citizens. Over the next thirty
years, the community's economic stock plummeted and the school in
question became a template for the failure of inner-city schools. In
2001, the new principal, Rob Stone, embarked on an ambitious project
to restore the school to its former glory, and wrestle away control
from the factions of the Crips and the Bloods that had become the
dominating social order.

Ron Stone, a black man who was married to a Jewish woman, immediately
established the school as a violence-free zone, and worked to quell
rumors or situations that might have given rise to gang violence. The
major thrust of this goal was an intense conflict resolution program
that acknowledged the gang influence on the community but refused to
let it control the school. He was astonishingly successful in defusing
the gangs' choke-hold and even inspired gang members to give up the
streets and attempt higher education. Furthermore, he engaged the all-
too-willing help of black and Jewish alumni in order to raise
scholarships and inspire the students. The Weequahic Alumni
Association still exists today.

None of Stone's ideas or methods should be all that shocking or
controversial. Conflict resolution would obviously be paramount to
decreasing violence within the school halls. Of course such efforts
cannot succeed without the help of the community. That such an
ideology should be considered noteworthy enough to form a documentary
is a rather said statement by itself. But that is not a slight against
the film itself.

The picture itself is, like many documentaries of its nature, an
interesting story well told. The opening act is filled with
fascinating anecdotes about life in Weequahic in the 1960s, with the
White, Jewish, and black communities living with only a token amount
of harmony (there was one white gang called 'the bangers' who would
attack Jews, while there was another gang called 'the redskins', who
would protect the Jews). The latter two acts delve into what will
surely seem like cliché for most followers of big-city education: the
gangs, the hopelessness, the struggle to get parents involved when
there aren't always two parents, and the lone parent has to work all
the time just to survive. But writer/director Beth Toni Kruvant deals
head-on with various cultural stereotypes on all sides that make the
system that much harder to reform. The picture also delves into the
oft-repeated claims about bitter hatred between the Jewish and African
American communities.

Heart of Stone is an inspirational story about an inspirational man.
There is also a tinge of anger in the picture, both at the sorry state
of certain public schools, as well as bewilderment as to why Stone's
relatively logical reform system isn't simply considered common sense.
This film is not a masterpiece of technical production; in fact the
video quality is occasionally crude. But this is a story worth
telling, so the means of which it is told is immaterial.

Ron Stone's example had a literally transformative effect on this
previously written-off school, as well as the students who attended
it. Hopefully his ideology can serve as a blueprint for other similar
schools and give said students a chance at something that many of us
took for granted - a future.

Grade: B+