Title: Half Nelson |
Release Date: 2006 |
Nationality and Language: |
Running time: 106 min |
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Distributor and Production Company: ThinkFilm,
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Director; Writer: Ryan Fleck, Anna Boden |
Producer: |
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Shareeka Epps |
Technical: Flat 1.85 to 1 |
Relevance to DOASKDOTELL site: teachers |
This film starts out with a two-piece visual oxymoron. 26 year old Canadian actor and A-lister Ryan Gosling lies on a bed, face down, in skivvies, in a grungy-as-can-be apartment, as the camera focuses on his super shaggy gams. In the next shot, we see him smoking a cigarette. That’s one contradiction. We’ll see a lot of him snorting cocaine later. He is always smoking. It’s depressing. We get to see the hairy legs one more time, and somehow he survives. As a middle school history teacher, he is always one step away from the principal, who checks his classroom and warns him that he needs to get on to civil rights next week, and who tells him to remove his chewing gum. A teacher has to set an example for the kids, and chewing his cud doesn’t cut it. Eventually he has a coke-related nosebleed (epistaxis) in class and has to leave for the teacher’s lounge and leave the kids unsupervised. (Actually, you can get a nosebleed from overuse of nasal decongestants like neo synephrine.) Soon the principal calls him in and tells him to close the door. We don’t see the confrontation. He has a big problem. We don’t need to see him get suspended or fired, but in a subsequent scene a substitute teacher, Mr. Light (with a smiley face over the “I”) takes over and asks the kids what they have been learning. There are no lesson plans. That’s the first thing that they tell substitutes: follow the lesson plans, to the letter. Ryan Gosling is always so likeable on screen and often
plays a charismatic but horribly flawed character. (Murder by Numbers, The At home, he keeps sinking. His affectionate pal cat dies of an accidental cocaine exposure. He has tried rehab and it didn’t work. And he starts driving 13 year old student Drey (Shareeka Epps) home and invites her to his apartment. Nothing “inappropriate” happens, except that she will eventually visit him in a motel room and see his drug use. It’s easy to image a different kid of film. The movie
could have shown the principal’s firing him (actually, as John Stossel points out on Chalk
(2007, Virgil / Hart Sharp / Morgan Spurlock Presents, dir. Mike Akel, wr with Chris Maas, 85
min, PG-13, digital video) is a comedy docudrama about four teachers
(actually one is an assistant principal) in Harrison High School in Austin, TX.
With Link to blogger discussion.
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Related reviews:. Murder By Numbers, The United States of Leland, The Notebook |
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