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Movie Review by:
Jim "Good Old JR" Rutkowski
Directed by: Ryan Fleck
Written by: Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Shareeka Epps, Anthony Mackie
Running time: 104 minutes,
Released: 08/11/06.
Rated R for drug content throughout,
language and some sexuality. |
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 In
Dead Poets’ Society, teacher John Keating (Robin Williams)
is the romantic-heroic rebel who inspires his scions of
ruling-class wealth to throw off the shackles of noblesse
oblige. In Educating Rita, professor Dr. Frank Bryant
(Michael Caine), cynical and alcoholic, is restored
momentarily to life when challenged by Rita (Julie Walters),
a bright, working-class self-starter and good-looker, in a
kind of Pygmalion set in the classroom. What Half Nelson,
written by Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden and directed by Fleck,
has most in common with these antecedents is an unwavering
faith in transformative change through education.
In the age of a politically numbed out America, where the
machinery of power relentlessly dumbs down the public and
erodes public education, Half Nelson offers a sensible,
wise, charming, cunning, sobering object lesson in what is
going on in the world--both how people actually live their
lives and why change must be embraced and not merely
endured. Think Film Company’s new release tackles thorny
philosophical questions head-on, confidently demonstrating
that complicated philosophy is within the reach of everyone.
Idealistic, white, middle-class Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling) is
a seventh-grade history teacher at a mostly Black public
school in contemporary Brooklyn. He coaches girls’
basketball after-hours. He has a serious and growing drug
addiction problem. He also happens to believe that
understanding history is important, life-alteringly
important, and that even most thirteen-year-olds can grasp
and appreciate Hegelian dialectics.
Indeed, director Fleck lays bare the principle of
dialectical change by incorporating directly into the plot
Dunne’s classroom lectures, slightly paraphrased from
Fleck’s own father’s web site (the senior Fleck is a
"dialectics autodidact") on Hegel and the American civil
rights movement of the 1960s. Lest this be mistaken for
preachy theorizing, the plot structure itself embodies some
of the very dialectical tensions shaping American society
today. Dan Dunne is not just white and middle-class, but the
child of Nixon-era anti-war activist parents, who have
resigned themselves, drifting into alcoholism and cynical
disillusionment with American politics.
Dan himself is unable to rise above the tension between his
faith in democratic egalitarianism and his own lack of faith
in himself (he is a drug rehab drop-out). As he acts out his
romantic-heroic rebellion against authority and its public
school-mandated history curriculum, he drifts into the
infantilizing fog of addiction. It becomes difficult to say
at what point principled protest becomes reactive acting
out, the (self) oppressed merely lashing out impotently
against authority. In the midst of his private despair,
Dunne befriends one of his students, bright, thoughtful,
vulnerable, thirteen-year-old Drey (Shareeka Epps). Drey’s
mother is a member of the working poor, an EMS attendant.
Drey has a brother in prison. And her father figure, Frank
(Anthony Mackie), is drawing her professionally into his
world of drug dealing. Seeking an alternative father figure,
Drew is at first powerfully drawn to Dunne, her teacher and
coach. But she soon becomes caught between attraction and
repulsion as she witnesses Dunne’s addiction and becomes
pulled closer into his addict’s life against her will.
Rather than sinking into sentimental clichés, both Dan’s and
Drey’s characters are intelligently drawn. Realistic
emotion, quirky wit, penetrating political insight, and
frequent improvised acting provide for dynamic performances
from both Gosling and Epps, who play off each other as
naturals. "Ryan Gosling" may sound like the name of a teen
heartthrob, but this performance, coming after "The
Believer," proves he's one of the finest actors working in
contemporary movies. And he's only 25 years old. Each
character in this film and each narrative thread manifests
the dialectics of change, whether Hegel’s historical
dialectic or Marx’s economic dialectic. Rather than
moralizing about systemic or individual failures, Half
Nelson asks the viewer to consider America’s history anew,
and try again. Philosophically sound, dramatically
absorbing, highly entertaining and highly instructive, Half
Nelson is hands down one of the best films of the year.
Half Nelson is playing at the Music Box and at the Cinearts
in Evanston. The film is on a “platform” release. This means
that it will open slowly and expand to more theaters as its
audience builds. If you are as starved for challenging and
rewarding films as I am, seek this movie out. Trust me on
this one. |
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HALF NELSON ©
2006 ThinkFilm.
All Rights Reserved
Review © 2006 Alternate Reality, Inc. |
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