Dir. Ryan Fleck, US, 2006, 106mins
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Shareeka Epps, Jeff Lima, Nathan Corbett
Review by Matthew Rodgers
Half Nelson finally arrives in British cinemas with the fanfare of being the movie which Ryan Gosling received this year's Academy Award nomination for. Do not play truant from seeing Ryan Fleck’s superbly understated character study because of its surface level similarities to Dangerous Minds, the more recent Freedom Writers and any number of cliché-ridden inspirational teacher tales, because it is hands down one of the best films of the year so far.
Gosling plays Dan Dunne, a disillusioned 20-something eighth grade teacher in a run down Brooklyn school. He ignores the scheduled curriculum instead choosing to make sure that the kids understand the history instead of just learning it. Dan is a lost soul, a metaphor for this mis-placed generation, and a character who wears his liberal heart on his sleeve and has a desire to change things in this, and his messed up world. The only problem is that he can’t, so in order to escape from his existence he uses drugs. It's this habit that leads to him forming a bond with one of his students Drey (Epps) when she catches him smoking crack in the school changing rooms.
Selling any film on a single performance is a risky move, but with Half Nelson it is fully justified. Gosling's on-screen achievement is never striving to be appreciated in the same way that many Oscar baiting roles can illicit, with the vein-straining monologues from those individuals starved of the golden statue. Dan is a three dimensional character created with a natural turn of effortless ease and its a credit to the script and actor that he remains an empathic character despite his many flaws. Unlike the aforementioned similarly themed films, Dan doesn’t right any wrongs and lives in a celluloid world where everything is not a bed of roses.
Acting honours shouldn't just be reserved for Gosling because newcomer Epps is fantastic as the wise beyond her years Drey. The relationship between the two is always utterly convincing. At separate turning points in the respective lives, instead of finding their places in society which they have been struggling to do, they discover each other, her someone to look up to in a life absent of patriarchy, and him someone to save, which for the meantime will suffice on a realistic narrative level. It's not surprising that the films standout scenes are the minimalist exchanges of dialogue between them.
The filmmakers are brave to offer such a bleak but satisfying moviegoing experience. Don’t expect an inspirational life-changing lesson, but an expertly constructed, superbly acted antithesis of the usual blackboard background rubbish.
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