Half Nelson
An affecting character study of a troubled, drug-addicted inner-city teacher, “Half Nelson” is also a bracing examination of the sad state of American leftist politics. Director Ryan Fleck and his co-screenwriter, Anna Boden, are sympathetic but clear-eyed about the left’s struggles to reassert its relevance. “Half Nelson” takes place at the messy crossroads between idealism and real life.
Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling) is an energetic, charismatic social studies teacher who’s ballsy enough to teach dialectical theory to eighth-graders — and talented enough to pull it off. He also coaches the girls’ basketball team. (Dan is white; his students are mostly black; Brooklyn is the setting.) But if teaching is the noblest profession it’s also the one of the most draining. All educators need to blow off steam. Dan’s favorite method is to snort cocaine, drink whiskey and have sex with strangers. It’s not just a dangerous recreation: Dan is an addict, and when he doesn’t have enough money for his usual eight-ball of blow, he buys “the other shit,” i.e. crack. And one of his students, Drey (Shareeka Epps), catches him smoking it in the locker room. Whoops.
Thus begins a delicate push-and-pull between teacher and student, who fumble toward something resembling friendship even as each realizes the dangers involved. Meanwhile, Drey starts getting attention from Frank (Anthony Mackie), the neighborhood drug dealer who put Drey’s older brother in prison (he worked for Frank and refused to rat him out). Frank begins looking out for Drey, giving her money and candy, cheering for her at a basketball game. Dan, who knows a dealer when he sees one, is openly hostile to Frank and tries to keep Drey away from her. Meanwhile, Drey, who is 13, tells her overworked paramedic mom that she doesn’t need to worry about her. She’ll figure out herself whether her associations with these men put her in danger.
“Half Nelson” doesn’t just pay lip service to dialectical theory. It builds it into the structure. Thesis: Dan. Antithesis: Frank. Synthesis? That’s up to Drey. And yet the movie never gets bogged down or precious. It always feels real.
Fleck and Boden have a superb ear for dialogue. Dan uses street slang just often enough and just confidently enough that his students can relate to him and still take him seriously. Gosling is brilliant in the role. He never overdoes the junkie tics. Most of the time, he can function just fine. And even when he’s strung out and working on no sleep, he can still catch a student copying another’s test. Gosling has a quiet, piercing charisma. You understand why women are drawn to him despite, or sometimes because of, his sloppy-hipster appearance.
Dan’s confrontation with Frank is a marvel. He warns Frank to stay away from Drey while making palpable the burden of what they both know: that he can’t claim the moral high ground because he buys what Frank sells. In a lesser movie, this scene would end in violence, but Fleck and Boden take it in a peaceful but sad direction. Gosling imbues Dan with hope and frustration, idealism and anger, self-confidence and self-pity.
The frustration often emerges when Dan is trying to reconcile his left-wing politics with contemporary reality. He refers to an infamous University of Maryland study indicating that nearly 75 percent of President Bush’s supporters still believe Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and Iraq had ties to al-Qaida, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. “What are we supposed to do about that?” he asks, expressing the left’s impotence at counteracting the right-wing propaganda machine. When Isabel (Monique Gabriela Curnen), a fellow teacher who has spent the night with him, sees several leftist treatises on Dan’s bookshelves, she asks him if he’s a communist. It’s not an accusation — she’s merely intrigued. But Dan reacts with hostility, treating her coldly.
Another key scene finds Dan at home with his family. His parents are alcoholic ex-hippies who have long since drowned their idealism. They’re casually dismissive of Dan’s work, and his dad, after a huge glass of whiskey, lets fly with his latent racism. The evening sends Dan into a despairing tailspin that ends with an excruciating encounter in Isabel’s apartment, beginning when he knocks on her door and announces, “I am not now … nor have I ever been … a communist.”
“Half Nelson” is a work of fierce intelligence and emotional truth. It’s important but not self-important, because the story and characters are so much more than mouthpieces for the movie’s worthy ideas.