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 half nelson
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Ryan Gosling wrestles a drug habit. You might remember a commercial from a few years back which was meant to encourage people to work in education. It rounded up famous faces, from pop stars to the Prime Minister, and asked them to name that one teacher who inspired and made a difference to them, in and out of the classroom. Now, imagine if Tony Blair’s favourite professor had been instructing Britain’s future leader whilst doped out of his mind, and you have a sense of Dan Dunne, the protagonist of Half Nelson. Dunne, played by Ryan Gosling, is a young, inner-city junior high school teacher, something of a maverick, yet popular – and spiralling into self-destruction. For as he strives to fill his students with knowledge, he’s also pumping himself full of drugs. “It’s a metaphor for struggle,” says director/co-writer Ryan Fleck of the film’s title. “It’s a wrestling hold that you can get out of but it’s a little bit tricky. One has to flail a little to get out of it. Not that I wrestle.” In fact, neither does Dunne. He does, however, run the girls’ basketball team and one night after a game, his student, thirteen-year-old Drey (Shareeka Epps), finds her coach strung out on crack. It’s a shared secret that leads to an unlikely relationship that could profoundly affect them both. As with its enigmatic title, Half Nelson is a subtle, nuanced film that never attacks its issues with a typical Hollywood stranglehold. Instead, Fleck and co-writer/editor Anna Boden, expanding their award-winning short, delicately convey a sense of lives in the balance, caught between family disillusionment, social pressures and personal demons. Drey’s older brother is in jail for assisting charismatic drug dealer Frank (Anthony Mackie), a job Frank has earmarked for her too. But what authority does Dan have to “save” Drey when he himself is hooked on Frank’s product?  It could all sound like a worthy after-school presentation, but the filmmakers are far more astute than that. “It’s not a message movie, it’s not an anti-drugs movie,” insists Fleck. “Certainly you can see where abuse and addiction can lead, but that wasn’t the core intent. We’re interested in movies that deal with complicated characters, struggling with something inside themselves.” Powered by the excellent, Oscar-nominated Gosling and newcomer Epps, Half Nelson makes you think and feel for yourself - just like a great teacher. Which reminds me: thank you, Mr Eric Watson.
Leigh Singer
Half Nelson, on selected release 20 April 07.
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