Susan Granger’s review of “Paper Clips” (Miramax Films)
Have you ever wondered if you can make a difference? What if you’re only in 8th grade? This documentary shows, eloquently, how a few kids can make a difference, one paper clip at a time. When the predominantly poor, white, Protestant students at Whitwell Middle School in rural Whitwell, Tennessee, were studying concept of diversity, the Holocaust served as a cautionary tale about how intolerance can lead to genocide. But when they were told that six million Jews were killed by the Nazis, one student asked, “What is six million? I’ve never seen six million.” In order to make that number real, the kids did research and discovered the paper clip was invented by Norwegians, who wore them as a protest to Hitler’s persecution of the Jews. So the kids decided to try to collect six million paper clips, one for each human being who perished. After the first year, students got discouraged but a pair of German journalists picked up the story, followed by the Washington Post and NBC. Within weeks, Whitwell Middle School received 24 million paper clips and 25,000 letters about their project, many from Holocaust victims’ relatives. Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Bill Cosby and Tom Bosley wrote, along with President George W. Bush and former Presidents Bush and Clinton. Eager to refute the “dumb little redneck kids from the South” stereotype, the teachers also wanted to show the world what these Appalachian kids could accomplish to combat prejudice. While first-time film-makers Elliot Berlin and Joe Fab do get quite maudlin and tedious as they chronicle this endeavor, on the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Paper Clips” is a compassionate, inspirational 8. As someone wrote: “You’ve embarked on a journey that begins in the brain but ends in the heart.”
