Review: Powerful ‘Half Nelson’ confronts stereotypes

Directed by: Ryan Fleck

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Shareeka Epps

Rated: R

In an age where Hollywood has become quite adept at playing follow the leader, a film has come along that turns the established “white teacher helping inner city students” genre inside out.

Ryan Fleck’s “Half Nelson” is gritty-looking to the point of seeming like cinéma vérité and is not only a dramatic shift from the norm, but a work that dares to present a political message in a post 9/11 world that seems to disdain such things in film.

Ryan Gosling – who was so riveting in “The Believer”– plays Dan Dunne, a junior high school teacher who always looks on the verge of some sort of exhaustion-related breakdown. We understand why when we see him in the school restroom after coaching a girls’ basketball game. He’s smoking like a fiend. Not cigarettes, but a crack pipe.

One of his players finds him there passed out, pipe in hand. Drey, played masterfully beyond her years by the young Shareeka Epps, is a good kid, a quiet kid whose demeanor speaks of wisdom obtained in life lessons. Her parents are divorced. Dad never visits, mom works double shifts as an emergency medical technician, and her brother Mike is in jail. He was busted but didn’t rat on a drug dealer who regularly slips Drey and her mom cash to help with the bills. The dealer may have some other ideas for Drey to make some money.

After the incident in the bathroom, Drey and Dunne become friends. Not much is said about the incident, but eventually things surface in the pair’s personal dynamic. Dunne informs the kid, in a “do as I say, not as I do” moment, "Look, just because you know that one thing about me … one thing doesn't make a man."

There is a sense of unease throughout the film that something bad is going to happen: Dunne confronts the dealer, other teachers seem to know Dunne has some problems, those problems worsen and there is a near-rape scene. But when the emotional climax comes, it’s different than expected. It is no less powerful.

Director Fleck is the son of vintage 1960s Berkeley radicals and as such sneaks some politically charged ideas into the mix.

Dunne, a history teacher, strays far from the school’s curriculum and teaches his kids about dialectic theory. In a time when politicians declare, “You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists,” using dialectic theory which, in a nutshell, states, “The aim of the method is to try to resolve disagreements through rational discussion,” could be seen as treason.

“Half Nelson” is a powerful, affecting film – one that makes us confront many preconceived notions and stereotypes. Gosling and young Epps give performances worthy of the intense, thought-provoking material.