Half Nelson

[Howard Schumann]

HALF NELSON

Directed by Ryan Fleck (2006)

Set in Brooklyn, New York where he currently lives, Ryan Fleck's first full-length feature, Half Nelson, is a gritty, sensitive, and emotionally harrowing film that meticulously avoids the inspirational clichés of many teacher-student films and the obligatory violence of films set in the ghetto. The title is derived from a wrestling move in which you turn an attacker's strength back on him. In the case of Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling), an idealistic eight-grade history teacher in an inner city school, he turns the attack on himself, inspiring his students by day and drugging himself at night with crack cocaine.

Dan is a well-liked teacher and basketball coach whose parents (Deborah Rush and Jay O. Sanders) were liberal activists during the 60s and 70s, participating in protests against the Vietnam War but have now substituted alcoholism for political passion. Like his parents, he wants to make an impact on the world but is disillusioned with the current political climate and, out of frustration and fatigue, (like many on the Left today) has drifted into a self-induced stupor. Believing in social justice and that society can be changed through education, he teaches history, to the chagrin of the school's administrator, in the form of Hegelian dialectic, showing that change results from a clash of opposites.

Dan shows his students videos of seminal events from the last fifty years such as the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that paved the way for desegregation of the schools, clips from the civil rights movement, and Mario Savio speaking on the Berkeley campus during the Free Speech Movement. To its credit, the events in the film do not occur in a political vacuum but attempts to tie in the failed protests of the Left to Dan's drug habit are not entirely persuasive. Dunne's life begins to spiral out of control when one of his students, thirteen-year old Drey (Shareeka Epps), discovers him in the girl's bathroom passed out from ingesting cocaine. Instead of becoming frightened or angry, Drey brings him water and helps him to gradually come down from his high.

Drey comes from a family in which her mother works a double shift and is rarely at home, her father is out of town, and her older brother is in prison for selling drugs, but she is mature and street-wise beyond her age. She promises to keep his secret and both find that their unlikely friendship satisfies an emotional need that Drey cannot find with her classmates and Dan cannot find with other adults. He is dating a fellow teacher (Monique Curnen) but his behavior with her is erratic and his political speeches and drug habits soon turn her off. A former girl friend from his period of rehabilitation (which he said didn't work for him) tells him that she is now getting married which pushes him further into a downward trajectory.

The emotional highlight of the film is a confrontation between Dunne and Frank (Anthony Mackie), a suave drug dealer and associate of Drey's older brother who recruits Drey to be his collector. While Dan wants to steer Drey in the right direction, he is hardly a role model and the results, while promising, are inconclusive. Although the premise of the film is somewhat implausible, Gosling's performance of the charming but flawed teacher is completely credible, so nuanced and touching that we root for him in spite of his capacity for self-destruction. Shareeka Epps is equally convincing in her powerfully understated performance as his tough but sensitive young friend. Co-written by Anna Boden and supported by an outstanding original score by Broken Social Scene, Half Nelson "stands and delivers" one of the finest films of the year.

GRADE: A-

[Chris Knipp]

To its credit, the events in the film do not occur in a political vacuum but attempts to tie in the failed protests of the Left to Dan's drug habit are not entirely persuasive....premise of the film is somewhat implausible

I reviewed this film in connection with the SFIFF--and was harder on it than you are. Against the late-summer movie fare, this is looking different, and in a way a lot better -- it's an original film, independent in a good sense, whose outlook as you note isn't clichéd; and whose earnestness isn't cloying. I wouldn't want to dwell on its faults in this new public context (the lousy competition out there at the moment). People can read my review where I point out what I felt to be the inconsistencies and the weaknesses of Gosling's performance and possibly even of his casting in the film. But I would be the first to say Gosling is an interesting, dedicated young actor; I've sought out his performances and been electrified by at least one of them (in The Believer). The others, especially Epps, do good work. Ryan Fleck certainly deserves to be watched, and the excellent reviews this has been getting suggest that he will be. I liked the way you made sense out of the title. I only wish the hypocrisy and contradiction of being a young political idealist and a full-time drug addict were more intensely highlighted.

[mouton]

HALF NELSON
Written by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck
Directed by Ryan Fleck


A teacher tries to open the minds of a class of inner-city high school students. Plainly put, the premise of HALF NELSON sounds like a movie we’ve all seen too many times before but this is not that movie. HALF NELSON doesn’t soften the hard or smooth over the rough. It opens with Ryan Gosling as Dan Dunne, waking up to his day. He looks exhausted, dirty. As he stumbles around for his pants, he even looks deathly. Mr. Dunne is an 8th grade history teacher and a basketball coach. He is also drug addict who has cut himself off from as much human intimacy as possible. After coaching a losing game and having an awkward conversation with an ex-girlfriend, his two worlds crash into each other in the girls’ locker room. When he thinks everyone has left, he lights up his crack pipe in a bathroom stall and falls into the high until he hears footsteps. The stall door opens and he stares blankly, curled up on the toilet, at the face of Drey (Shareeka Epps), one of his history students. He insists he’s fine but he isn’t fooling either one of them. She helps him off the floor and into his car. By the time he drops her off, an unlikely friendship has begun, a star performance is being built by Gosling and a brilliantly engaging film is well under way.

Despite his dependence, Mr. Dunne manages to make it to class fairly often. His students, he claims on more than one occasion, are possibly the only thing in his life that keeps him sane. In the classroom, he has purpose. That purpose, he has decided despite the school principal’s protests, is to prepare his students for mental and emotional challenges life will present when they leave high school. Though he is supposed to be teaching the details surrounding the civil rights movement, he prefers to lecture on the philosophy behind how such a change comes about. His approach, albeit unorthodox, is effective. His students are attentive and encouraged to think progressively. Mr. Dunne believes change is brought about when two opposing forces reach a turning point where one force will ultimately overpower the other force. He illustrates this point with a friendly game of arm wrestling. The paradox of a man so intent on inspiring others when he has so little interest in inspiring himself is both fascinatingly twisted and painfully heartbreaking to watch. My heart goes out to Mr. Dunne but all the while, I want to shake him out of his funk.

Keeping with the theme of opposing forces, Mr. Dunne’s relationship with Drey serves as a mirror to the state his life has reached. Drey is a 13-year-old girl who is growing up mostly on her own as her father has left, her mother is always working and her older brother is in jail. She is in need of a solid adult influence in her life and her choices are between Mr. Dunne, a man who has long ago given up on his future and a neighborhood drug dealer who would like to recruit her as part of his crew. Evidently, she has her own opposing forces to deal with. While she is necessarily more mature than the majority of her peers, she is still a teenager and struggles to know her place, especially in relation to Mr. Dunne. There is clearly an admiration as she hangs off every word of his lectures, possibly even a crush. Still, her most mature awareness, and this can be directly attributed to Epps’ stunningly understated performance, is that Mr. Dunne needs her more than she needs him. As he has no friends, he needs an impartial person in his life to remind him about the simple and touching aspects of human interaction. Her beauty grows out of her instinctual impulse to help.

A “half nelson” is a wrestling move that, when applied correctly, prohibits the person in the hold from being able to free him or herself from the hold until they submit to defeat to stop the pain. In the case of Dan Dunne, the drug addiction in his life is the perpetrator of that move and he admitted defeat a long time ago, acknowledging at this point in his life that he only takes the drugs to get by these days compared to his earlier days when he took them to forget. I honestly don’t know which is worse. HALF NELSON is a transfixing character study, thanks in great part to Gosling’s impressive versatility. In many ways, he himself encompasses two opposing forces at the same time but with the hold his drug usage has on his life, it isn’t likely he’ll reach his turning point any time soon, if at all.

[Chris Knipp]

Exdellent review, mouton -- sincere and convincing and well written, though I have to repeat that I was disappointed by Half Nelson for a number of reasons, although I give Ryan Fleck credit for taking up an unusual kind of high school teacher story, as you say, and Gosling for once again taking on a challeinging role. This is a film that tries to do something very serious. Maybe my background in teaching and drug addiction influences me to view the way the film presents its situations more critically, though.

A couple things I said before:

"Gosling looks like a reedy student himself and his bland expression and his small, too-close-together eyes hardly hint at the torment that might result from living a double life as upright politically committed history teacher and off-duty full-time cokehead. What are the demons that drove him to such an addiction? All we can see are the weakness and laziness that keep him in it. When not addressing the class he can barely stay awake, so you wonder how he landed the additional job of girls' basketball coach. Gosling may have gotten into the theme of dialectic that he emphasizes in his classes enough to be able to improvise his teaching sessions, but they're mostly so simple they're embarrassing. The role is problematic. As an addict, Dan Dunne, his character, is shut down emotionally. Under those circumstances how do you convey the presence of masked feelings? There is more to Gosling and to Dunne than meets the eye here, but the movie is a disappointment. "

"Fleck is too timid to push these points [various political and social references] into a real shape, and what Half Nelson gives us remains only a situation, not a statement."

"Dan's dull bleary expression every time he enters the classroom looks real enough, but you wonder how he can convince the class that he's a good teacher. He is painfully sincere, but he hardly convinces us. "

But since this is looking better in terms of the general fare out there so far, I realize I may have under-rated it and if I have the time eventually I want to re-watch and re-consider it. Maybe I was just having a bad day. Those were dull rainy mornings at the SFIFF press screenings. Again, my review. So far, I still feel the film is being over-praised.

[mouton]

Hey Chris ... thanks again for the praise. Your words always make me feel like I'm getting better at this. That being said, I think your comments are valid. Your background must inevitably give you added insight. It is a stretch to imagine how Mr. Dunne finds the energy to get to class each day and come alive ... mind you, it doesn't go so well by the end of the film. The only explanation I can think of, and it's a stretch, but he does remark how teaching the kids gives him meaning.

I don't believe it was necessary to give us any background as to why he turned to drugs to begin with. I am much more interested in why they are still a part of his life. And as is shown with Drey getting involved with selling drugs, there clearly doesn't always have to be a complex reason.

I feel the same way about "Little Miss Sunshine" that you do about this film ... that I should maybe see it again because people responded so well to it and I only mostly enjoyed it. And I think it's also very interesting that we are building films up to be more than they perhaps are given that we have been starved for good cinema this year.

The fall had better deliver.

[Chris Knipp]

You are getting better at review-writing, and you obviously have a gift for writing to begin with.

I just loved Little Miss Sunshine from the first few minutes, but Half Nelson didn't grab me. But see it again, maybe it will work the second time around (Sunshine, I mean) Sunshine was a surprise to me because a good friend who talks to me about movies all the time said it was great and I annoyed the hell out of her by insisting I wasn't going to like it. It sounded like the kind of indie crap I hate, like The Station Agent, for instance, which to me was an indie cliche, though people loved it.

Sure you're right, it's definitely true that anyone can become an addict--and that's why he goes on using: because he's an addict. I'd still like to know how he got addicted, the specific circumstances, and some signs that he's in a degree of torment over this situation, and struggling to decide to keep on fuctioning vs. break the cycle. As a characgter I don't find him as interesting as other people do; for an addict he's a little bit underdeveloped and bland. Not that there aren't all kinds. Frankly I like to see more struggle going on--an intervention. It disappoints me that his parents are winos and haven't a clue about his problem. Given his educated white middle-class background I'd like to see someone from there break in and say, Hey, man, you're in a ghetto situation living a ghetto life. Wake up and get out of this! (Of course there are while middle-class addicts--but he's living in a ghetto environment.)

[oscar jubis]

Half Nelson is simply wonderful from beginning to end. I usually have no difficulty expressing what I believe to be flaws and limitations of films I like. I obviously think very highly of Half Nelson in that I couldn't find a single scene or character that rings false or contrived. Mouton calls it "a transfixing character study" and I guess he means Dan, yet even secondary characters have a very authentic feel. It's been a few hours since I watched it (at noon with two more people in the theatre, who said they'd see it again) and I can't seem to concentrate on anything else.

My reaction differs too much from that of Chris to get into meaningful debate. Besides, it seems to me Chris wanted a different kind of movie altogether (and how can one argue with the statement that he didn't find the character "interesting" or "as interesting" as others have). One that sounds to me like something more conventional than what Half Nelson offers. But Howard, I'm curious as to how the film "attempts to tie in the failed protests of the Left to Dan's drug habit". I didn't see these attempts but will keep an open mind.

Several scenes had an enormous emotional impact on me. As Howard mentioned, the confrontation between Dan and Frank, but also Drey finding Dan in the bathroom, and towards the conclusion, running into him at a drug party when she makes her first delivery. The last scene gives one a ray of hope, but well within the bounds of realism that characterize the whole picture.

[Chris Knipp]

I'm glad you like it; it's a very ambitio us and serious film. I think my observations are valid, as are yours. For what it's worth, I've done a lot of drugs, and I've been a schoolteacher, so I may know this character pretty well. It is best to find faults, even with the finest work. If you can't find faults, then your praise has the danger of seeming uncritical. Thre are faults in Hamlet, Pride and Prejudice, Don Quixote, The Odyssey. If you look at the criticism written of the film, you will find valid faults noted. You don't have to accept mine. If you don't want to debate it, that's fine; there's nothing to debate, maybe. But it's not fair to say that I'm looking for a different kind of character. I'm looking for a crackhead who's a high school teacher. That's the basic given. But trust me, I acknowledge a lot of good qualities and high intentions in the film. If Gosling got an Oscar nomination for this role, I'd be fine with that (I don't know what his chances are), because he deserved one already for The Believer.

But as I've said already, in the context of the US films out there this season, Half Nelson looks to me in retrospect as more significant than I first gave it credit for being and I want to watch it again, but my schedule hasn't permitted that. I've got all that I can handle right now keeping up with newer ones and the NYFF. Factotum is another one that people are saying is "very good," that when I first saw it at the SFIFF was nice, but not worthy of much mention but now, in the context of what's out therre, looks more in the superior category.

[oscar jubis]

*I didn't say you were "looking for a different kind of character" but "a different kind of movie", one which goes into "how he got addicted" which, assuming Dunne has had drug experiences for years would have to extend the narrative timeline or include flashbacks. I feel you seem more concerned about the material the film lacks while ignoring the riches Half Nelson offers. I like the immediacy of the film and its focus on the here-and-now.

*Half Nelson is a decidedly political film. It is so via a dual approach, a didactic, explicit one and, additionally, a subtle, implicit one. The narrative cuts to close-ups of students facing the camera to give brief presentations regarding events of the Civil Rights movement in America. Among them, the one I found most inspiring involves the victims of the CIA-sponsored overthrow of Chilean president Salvador Allende. Why? Because we've been conditioned to devalue the lives of non-Americans by our isolationism and xenophobia. Given current cultural practice, to consider the lives of Chilean leftists among victims of civil rights abuses perpetrated by US governments amounts to an act of subversion.

Morover, the narrative itself carries a strong political subtext. Two brief but unequivocal examples among many: the fact that Frank is free while his former drug-runner (Drey's brother) serves jail time accurately reflect how the victims of our tough-on-drugs justice system are the younger, more vulnerable, lower level cogs in the drug business hierarchy. The filmmakers' narrative choices involve certain implications. Why is Drey so vulnerable? Her single mother has to work two jobs in the present economic system in order to make ends meet, so she's largely unavailable to her daughter. Single mothers spending their waking hours at low-paying jobs is a direct consequence of welfare reform. Drey's vulnerability is to a certain extent a consequence of such conservative policies. These characters in these situations, as chosen and imagined by the filmmakers, reflect certain societal problems in a relaxed, organic, off-hand manner.

[Chris Knipp]

I did not see the riches, though as i'm saying, it's all relative. Your other remarks could be part of a longer review that you might write and they do provide insight into why you rate Half Nelson so highly. I have nothi ng more to say now, till I see the movie again. I get it that you object to both my reading of the character and the film itself, which you don't think I take on its own merits. There's no point in my repeating what I've said in general terms again.

[Howard Schumann]

Originally posted by oscar jubis
But Howard, I'm curious as to how the film "attempts to tie in the failed protests of the Left to Dan's drug habit". I didn't see these attempts but will keep an open mind.

It seems that the strain of his poliitcal disillusionment and his not being able to make a difference contributed to his turning to drugs to cope with the pressure. That is my reading anyway but I don't think it is well drawn.