PARK CITY -- If there was ever any doubt, with "Half Nelson", Ryan Gosling establishes himself as a major talent and one of the finest young actors around. Fortunately, freshman feature director Ryan Fleck and screenwriter Anna Boden have given him a juicy role as a well-intentioned teacher in a black neighborhood whose own life is spinning out of control. A quality indie film in terms of subject matter and execution, the picture should find a receptive audience in specialty venues and later on cable outlets.
An expanded version of Fleck's award-winning Sundance short, "Gowanus, Brooklyn", "Half Nelson" knows the territory and avoids the crusading teacher cliches of lesser films. Besides, Dan Dunne (Gosling) is too screwed up to be a white knight, and in the world he inhabits nothing is black and white.
Dunne is one of those charismatic teachers who has a great rapport and street cred with his students, one in particular, 12-year-old Drey (Shareeka Epps). Drey's life-defining experience to date has been the imprisonment of her brother for dealing. Newcomer Epps keeps pace with Gosling and communicates a soulfulness and wisdom well beyond her years.
Dunne, who teaches history with a Marxist slate and coaches the girls' basketball team, tries to keep Drey out of trouble, but he's hardly one to be giving advice. After a game one night, Drey discovers Dunne stooped over in a bathroom stall with a crack pipe in his hand. Dunne has a major drug problem and is struggling just to stay afloat.
The other major influence in Drey's life -- her single mother is at work most of the time -- is her brother's partner in crime, Frank (Anthony Mackie). A smooth and charming operator, Frank has designs on recruiting Drey for the family business. In a way, Frank and Dunne are fighting for her soul, but because Dunne buys his drugs from Frank's men, he is hardly setting much of an example.
Gosling's triumph is that even as the character sinks deeper in a hole and does some foolish things -- flinging a basketball at a referee over a disputed call, showing up for class so Strung Out he can barely teach -- he is still a sympathetic figure. His intelligent face, covered in a scraggly beard, and graceful gait suggests a person of good will even if he is a bag of contradictions.
The son of socially conscious parents, he became a teacher to help save the world, and now he can't even save himself. Drey is as much his redemption as he is hers. But he fares less well with the other women in his life. His ex-girlfriend Rachel (Tina Holmes), whom he met in rehab and clearly still has a thing for, has cleaned up and is engaged. He also blows it with a lovely fellow teacher (Monique Gabriela Curnen) when he shows up stoned at her house in the middle of the night and forces himself on her.
It's a long way down, and the film probably could benefit from a bit of trimming to keep from getting repetitious, but for the most part the story is riveting, largely because of Gosling and Epps' work and chemistry together. Nice score, sometimes nothing more than a plaintive guitar, by Canadian band Broken Social Scene is a big plus in setting the tone and keeping the story moving.
Other tech credits are first-rate. Cinematographer Andrij Parekh gives the film a gritty, lived-in look without it seeming stagy. And Boden, doubling as editor, makes some beautiful cuts from the crack house to the classroom. But at the end of the day, it's Gosling's performance that elevates the material and makes it memorable.
An expanded version of Fleck's award-winning Sundance short, "Gowanus, Brooklyn", "Half Nelson" knows the territory and avoids the crusading teacher cliches of lesser films. Besides, Dan Dunne (Gosling) is too screwed up to be a white knight, and in the world he inhabits nothing is black and white.
Dunne is one of those charismatic teachers who has a great rapport and street cred with his students, one in particular, 12-year-old Drey (Shareeka Epps). Drey's life-defining experience to date has been the imprisonment of her brother for dealing. Newcomer Epps keeps pace with Gosling and communicates a soulfulness and wisdom well beyond her years.
Dunne, who teaches history with a Marxist slate and coaches the girls' basketball team, tries to keep Drey out of trouble, but he's hardly one to be giving advice. After a game one night, Drey discovers Dunne stooped over in a bathroom stall with a crack pipe in his hand. Dunne has a major drug problem and is struggling just to stay afloat.
The other major influence in Drey's life -- her single mother is at work most of the time -- is her brother's partner in crime, Frank (Anthony Mackie). A smooth and charming operator, Frank has designs on recruiting Drey for the family business. In a way, Frank and Dunne are fighting for her soul, but because Dunne buys his drugs from Frank's men, he is hardly setting much of an example.
Gosling's triumph is that even as the character sinks deeper in a hole and does some foolish things -- flinging a basketball at a referee over a disputed call, showing up for class so Strung Out he can barely teach -- he is still a sympathetic figure. His intelligent face, covered in a scraggly beard, and graceful gait suggests a person of good will even if he is a bag of contradictions.
The son of socially conscious parents, he became a teacher to help save the world, and now he can't even save himself. Drey is as much his redemption as he is hers. But he fares less well with the other women in his life. His ex-girlfriend Rachel (Tina Holmes), whom he met in rehab and clearly still has a thing for, has cleaned up and is engaged. He also blows it with a lovely fellow teacher (Monique Gabriela Curnen) when he shows up stoned at her house in the middle of the night and forces himself on her.
It's a long way down, and the film probably could benefit from a bit of trimming to keep from getting repetitious, but for the most part the story is riveting, largely because of Gosling and Epps' work and chemistry together. Nice score, sometimes nothing more than a plaintive guitar, by Canadian band Broken Social Scene is a big plus in setting the tone and keeping the story moving.
Other tech credits are first-rate. Cinematographer Andrij Parekh gives the film a gritty, lived-in look without it seeming stagy. And Boden, doubling as editor, makes some beautiful cuts from the crack house to the classroom. But at the end of the day, it's Gosling's performance that elevates the material and makes it memorable.
- 1/30/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
CANNES -- Crystal Meth is the accelerant of this cliche binge of a film. The grubby down-spiral of a meth-head (Asia Argento) who strips 'n' trips her way across Boondock USA, "The Heart Is Deceitful ... Above All Things" is a grueling, cinematic excretion.
In this episodic slice-of-low-life, filmmaker Asia Argento strings together a lurid line of addict behavior as a 23-year-old doper/mother drags her young son, newly yanked from his foster home, to a drug world of one-night stands and tin-foil hits. On and on its goes: From lover to lover, motel to motel, dead-end road to dead-end road.
Like its protagonist, the film goes nowhere. Argento has Strung Out a series of ever-increasing degradations and lobbed them together with an uninspired '60s cinematic mentality, where head trips involve colorful and fearsome birds and lunks of coal turn to rodents. Bereft of social or psychological insight, this scummed-together cinematic seems at best a vanity piece for Arengto.
Inspirationally impaired and dramatically retarded, this long-titled ditty will not likely afflict any audiences beyond the festival circuit.
In this episodic slice-of-low-life, filmmaker Asia Argento strings together a lurid line of addict behavior as a 23-year-old doper/mother drags her young son, newly yanked from his foster home, to a drug world of one-night stands and tin-foil hits. On and on its goes: From lover to lover, motel to motel, dead-end road to dead-end road.
Like its protagonist, the film goes nowhere. Argento has Strung Out a series of ever-increasing degradations and lobbed them together with an uninspired '60s cinematic mentality, where head trips involve colorful and fearsome birds and lunks of coal turn to rodents. Bereft of social or psychological insight, this scummed-together cinematic seems at best a vanity piece for Arengto.
Inspirationally impaired and dramatically retarded, this long-titled ditty will not likely afflict any audiences beyond the festival circuit.
- 5/19/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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