Half Nelson dvd movie.|
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List Price: $19.94 Our Price: $10.99 You Save: $8.95 Features • AC-3 • Closed-captioned • Color • Dolby • DVD-Video • Subtitled • Widescreen • NTSC In Theaters : 11 August, 2006 DVD Release : 13 February, 2007 |
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Half Nelson description
Sometimes people are attracted to each other because of their differences. When there's a nebulous attraction between a teacher and a young teenage child--as in the superb Half Nelson--the relationship has all the makings of confused disaster. Though there are a few uncomfortable moments when it's not obvious whether Dan (Ryan Gosling) and Drey (Shareeka Epps) might cross the line, the attraction between the pair is culled less from sexual tension than desperation. Dan is an idealistic history teacher in an inner-city school. Drey is one of his brightest students. For both, drugs represent something that may help them escape their worlds. He takes drugs to dull his dissatisfaction with himself. She views drugs as a possible way to better her life, even though she knows her brother's foray into that trade landed him in jail. Bleakly filmed and well told, Half Nelson soars because of the immaculate acting by Gosling and Epps. With his impish smile, Gosling provides a character that is at once disarming, alluring, and pitiful. As the young girl who's already seen too much hardship in her life, Epps plays her part with just the right amount of hardened raw emotion. While the ambiguous ending may not please fans weaned on happy Hollywood finales, it's a fitting and believable close to a thought-provoking film. --Jae-Ha Kim
Stills from Half Nelson (click for larger image)
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | The convergence of strength and weakness |
| In an interesting self-penned piece on the making of this film that appeared in IFC (the Independent Film Channel magazine) in 2006, director Ryan Fleck talks about the film's title, mentioning that half-nelson is a wrestling position that gives the grappler upon whom that position is imposed some hope for escape. This is the concept Fleck wanted to convey in this film, and he's done that, for sure.
As schoolteacher Dan Dunne, Ryan Gosling is superb, playing a young man who simultaneously challenges his inner city history students with concepts no other teacher would even dare think of (Hegel's dialectics), yet at the same time addicted to freebase crack cocaine. When one of his students, Drey (Shareeka Epps), discovers his addiction, an unusual relationship develops between the two, made all the more powerful by the fact that Drey is not your usual inner city student, but really smart--both intellectually and streetwise. In many movies, it would be the male lead that carries the film; thus, in Half Nelson, the viewer is initially expecting that Gosling will be the primary focus and shoulder the burden of insuring that the scenes are as strong as they can be. But that's not the case here. While Gosling is indeed extremely good in his role, newcomer Shareeka Epps is brilliant, just as strong if not stronger than Gosling in screen presence, and carrying way more than her share of the responsibility for this being a four-star movie. The third wheel is Anthony Mackie who plays a friendly drug dealer in the movie's setting, south central Los Angeles, and while he's also very good, it's really Epps and Gosling who drive Half Nelson. Mackie's character helps out Drey because Drey's brother is in jail and is a good friend of the drug dealer. Ironically, Drey's mother is a security guard. Schoolteacher Dunne more than recognizes the irony of him teaching dialectics, one of whose central concepts is the synthesis of opposites, to a class of kids who are subjected to the temptations of weakness every day. The irony, of course, is that Dunne himself is a convergence of strength and weakness--great teacher and also drug addict. And, as we see, Drey herself embodies this convergence as well, although not to the same extent that Dan does. She's a tough kid, but also recognizes the good in people. She knows Dan is good, but at the same time sees his weakness. She herself knows what good is, but at the same time engages in behavior that she ultimately sees as bad. This is a superior film, a riveting character study in which the two leads know exactly who their characters are--know exactly what, in fact, the complexities of those characters are--and play them brilliantly. Highly recommended. |
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