Half Nelson
**** (Masterpiece) Directed by Ryan Fleck | Written by Anna Boden and Fleck | With Ryan Gosling, Shareeka Epps, Anthony Mackie, Monique Gabriela Curnen, Karen Chilton, and Tina Holmes
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The hero of Half Nelson–finally opening here this week–is Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling), a dedicated history teacher and basketball coach at a junior high school in Brooklyn who’s also a crack addict–a combo that, according to any Manichaean view of the universe, couldn’t possibly exist. One might also argue that a crack addict couldn’t be responsible enough to be a good teacher, but he’s the most believable protagonist in any American movie I’ve seen this year. He’s far from being some simple postulate of the young couple who made this film, writer-director Ryan Fleck and writer Anna Boden. He’s a mess–an immature underachiever. But he’s also charismatic, multifaceted, and sincere, and we can’t really dismiss him without dismissing some part of ourselves.
Half Nelson presents us with plenty of moral quandaries. One of Dan’s students is a feisty yet thoughtful 13-year-old named Drey, the film’s toughest and wisest character (beautifully played by Shareeka Epps). She discovers Dan’s secret when she finds him with his crack pipe, semiconscious, in the girls’ bathroom. This creates an uneasy bond between them, not unlike the one she’s developing with a local dealer named Frank (Anthony Mackie, also a charismatic performance). Frank–a pal of her older brother, who’s in prison–shows as much concern for Drey’s welfare as Dan does, though Dan cringes at the idea of a dealer taking care of her. Having to choose between these two father figures sounds like a bleak prospect, and at times Drey’s features suggest she feels the world closing in on her. Though the film never minimizes the dangers she faces, her resilience finally gives us reason to be hopeful about her.
The MPAA–which has always been run by the major Hollywood studios and once administered the blacklist barring communists from working in the film industry–furnishes the film ratings that to a large extent determine whether films get advertised or distributed and what audiences they’ll play to. In other words, it’s acting in loco parentis. Its ratings are sometimes seen by the public as objective, as intended to serve our best interests, but the major studios have always done what’s in their own best interests. They want to monopolize our attention, and one way they’ve done that is by eliminating as many alternatives to their control as possible. It’s no accident that we have only one prominent rating system.
This Film Is Not Yet Rated WHEN Opens Fri 9/15 WHERE Landmark’s Century Centre, 2828 N. Clark PRICE $7-$9.50 INFO 773-444-3456
