>>REVIEW
HALF NELSON
STARRING Ryan Gosling and Shareeka Epps
DIRECTED BY Ryan Fleck
Friday, October 6
Uptown Screen
Ryan Gosling gives Dan Duan a strut-like electrified barbwire, whipping along on cocaine and counter-revolutionary charm. His character smirks and sniffs through a red-eyed fog as an inner-city history teacher who haphazardly connects with one of his students, Dre (Shareeka Epps), in the indie film, Half Nelson. It sounds like the typical feel-good fodder, but the film refuses to masturbate Hallmark sentiment. Unlike the amorphous cinema of his peers in American indie cinema, director and co-writer Ryan Fleck knows to ground his themes and nuanced shifts in the performances of his cast.
Fleck wraps themes of race and power around the nascent relationship between student and teacher, the history of change performed on the micro-stage of urban decay. Less searing and more ruminating, the film feels overstuffed. There are scenes such as Duane’s students individually addressing the audience regarding the history of civil rights that come off more irrelevant rather than enlightening. As well, the film can’t always avoid heart-coddling histrionics. A misguided step into Duane’s family of white suburban caricatures that were already tired in American Beauty and the inspirational history lectures cribbed from the notes of Robin Williams mar an otherwise nuanced film.
All that becomes irrelevant when Gosling, one of the most engrossing actors in film today, steps on screen. It’s as if he’s making up for all those TV episodes of Young Hercules and Breaker High, with his performance. A wipe of his nose or a wink, he takes naturalism to an art form. In his hands, Duane is more than just an agenda or an emotional, manipulative marionette. He presents us a man only able to grasp moments, so obsessive and narcissistic he can barely functions in the world around him. When he talks about how each sunrise marks a brand new day, you believe him because this is a man with only enough energy for one day every week; a martyr for his students when it’s completely unnecessary. Fleck knows when to harness the power of his star with unblinking close ups and when to step back and allow his characters to find their own way.
While Edward Norton fades into trademarked tics and bluffed stares, Gosling remains an actor of unparalleled integrity and intensity. The gravity of his performance pulls Half Nelson into a character portrait more revelation than inspiration. |
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