Half Nelson

'Half Nelson' is an independent drama with one of this year's suprise Oscar nominations... pretty boy Ryan Gosling gets his first Best Actor nomination (and, pretty much, his first critical notice) for his attuned performance as an idealistic teacher who also happens to be addicted to crack. But this film is more than just a performance, it has more than a few things to say that break apart standard film cliches and subverts accepted educational methods.

Gosling is Dan Dunne, a high school history teacher who loves his drugs. More than that, though, he is actually a good teacher. When he isn't invoking the wrath of the school principal for ignoring the school curriculum he is getting through to a class of predominantly black and hispanic kids, using the backdrop of history to teach bigger lessons than what the syllabus would have him teach. He's a likeable teacher, he gets on well with his students, and he also coaches the girl's basketball team. But his life is spiralling out of control, he is losing control of his addiction, and when one of his students - Drey (Shareeka Epps) - finds him all spaced out in the school locker rooms things don't look good.

This isn't strictly a story about redemption, or even a story about drugs. It's as much Drey's story as Dan's... Drey is a 13-year old girl who pretty much has to fend for herself. Her father is never around and her mother works long shifts to keep things afloat. Her older brother is in gaol, so it's up to his old 'business associate' Frank (Anthony Mackie) to look out for her. After Drey discover's Dan's secret drug addiction they become friends, and Dan worries about the influence Frank will have on Drey, and Drey is wary of ending up in gaol like her brother. Dan, however, can barely look after himself and his own problems, so it's hardly an ideal situation.

The core theme of 'Half-Nelson' is dialectics. Dialectics is hardly a new concept, it dates back to Ancient Greek philosophy, and also has it's roots in the writings of German freethinkers Hegel and Engels. It is the concept of change coming about via an exchange of ideas... the way opposing forces can influence each other and, ultimately, come to an understanding via the spiralling to-and-froing between their idealogies. The controversy of this is that the American education system doesn't want it taught in schools... some people find the idea of dialectics easy to understand, others can't get their head around it at all, and the idea itself has the potential to be disruptive.

Anyway, I digress... this film is about dialectics at it's heart. Dan teaches it to his class via a series of historical examples from the civil rights movement, and we see real footage of these events interspersed throughout the film. Beyond this, we can see Dan and Drey's relationship mirroring this philosophy... Dan doesn't or won't change overnight, and nor will Drey find her place in the world so easily, but through their interaction with one another they learn to break their own personal holding patterns, and through this we see hope for what could otherwise be hopeless situations. I found it surprisingly uplifting, maybe because it was so much more realistic than these kinds of films tend to be.

Gosling's work here is indeed worthy of a nomination too, he gives a sleepily passionate performance of the drug-addled idealist who's lost his way, but it never feels cliched or stock-standard... Dan retains his ideals and his passion for them despite the ways crack pulls him off the rails at inconvenient moments, and it's refreshing to see an American film adopt a less black-and-white view for once. Shareeka Epps is also impressive as Drey, she easily holds her own against Gosling, and Anthony Mackie is suitably charismatic as Frank (and, once again, his role is at odds with the cliches these kinds of films usually fall into).

A good, solid film and a breath of fresh air. Not at all what I was expecting, and something I suspect could stand up to several rewatchings.

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