I finally watched Half Nelson the other day. 2 stars out of 5. The script needs some serious revision to be worth any kind of emotional investment or to live up to the Academy-Award-nomination hype.
As hard as they both tried, even Broken Social Scene’s superb score and Ryan Gosling’s impressive performance fail to save this film. Gosling’s Dan Dunne demonstrates that it only takes a pulse and two brain cells connected by a tenuous synapse to “earn” a teaching credential. The administrator, in an attempt to portray the “heavy hand” of standardized curriculum, merely throws a soft look of scorn compared with how she should treat him. Mr. Dunne represents the kind of teacher who needs to be kicked violently out of the classroom without hesitation or a smile.
I never had a moment of sympathy for the guy. Every day he walks into his classroom, as Sting once wrote, “is a humiliating kick in the crotch.” If this guy can roll into work high, sleep at his desk, consent to kids cheating on a test, and get paid the same amount I do, why do any of us bust our humps? I see this movie as a portrayal of a real classroom somewhere — hopefully not at my school, but very possibly so. Maybe a crack-smoking teacher stretches things, but we all know teachers for whom the title is only technically correct.
My biggest issue with the film is the “teaching” it depicts. I fear that most movie audiences will see Dunne’s teaching as “what teaching outta be.” I can imagine people excited about the way Dunne “connects” with his students and teaches them about “real life” through his lectures. “History is the study of change over time” and he launches into a discussion of how conflict fuels history, a veiled reference to Dunne’s love of dialectics. Really, the best he does is rap rhapsodic about conflict to a group of eighth graders who are far too young to understand his esoteric rants. The worst he does is waste 50 minutes until the bell rings.
“I don’t know, I think some of them get it,” says Dunne. Possibly, but just as possibly not. To make matters worse, that’s all he ever talks about. The introductory “What is history?” lesson should have been finished in September at the latest. His administrator is right to ask him “Did you even open the binder on civil rights I gave you?”
Teaching is more than simply philosophizing with teenagers. There needs to be instruction in the content area because that’s what teachers are hired for: expertise in the subject. If philosophy facilitates that instruction, fantastic. Otherwise, save it for after the bell, when students ask you questions that you shouldn’t answer during class time (”Are you a republican or democrat?” comes to mind as such a question — and could easily produce such blathering).
So watch Half Nelson if you want to be reminded about why you should take time to plan or consider what you’ll do in class tomorrow. Don’t just wing it like Dunne does. If you do, at least go out in style and smoke some crack the night before. Yeah, that sounds ridiculous to me, too. So plan.
What’s Day One looking like for you so far?
5 comments
2. Todd says:
More credit, more credit, please. I know it’s not about teaching. But that’s my emphasis here and so it’s what I’m going to target in on.
My point is not that Fleck is telling us that Dunne’s a good teacher, but that many nonteacher viewers are thinking that. They are thinking that the administrator who tells Dunne to get on with actually teaching is preventing Dunne from “getting through” to his class.
If what you want to focus on is this as a film about addiction, it doesn’t even do that well. We have little sense about why he does what he does, how hard it is for him to handle his addiction, how he rationalizes being a drug addict and a teacher (that would make for an interesting film), his internal struggle to deal with his problems, the pain he causes his circle of friends, any trauma his addiction brings to his life (he actually seems perfectly content to be an addict and even happy with his ultimate decision). Viewers aren’t drawn into his world of addiction. We’re only given brief, clean, censored glances at it (one example being what you call the “emotional gut-punch”). Like Crash, this is a shallow treatment of a deep subject. That’s not just bad storytelling, it’s insulting in so many ways.
The writing is weak. The conversations are dull. Most characters are uninspired, flat archetypes. The plot is just not interesting. A single good actor and great music can’t save a movie if it’s got a bad script. There’s a good idea buried in there, but they didn’t develop the script enough to have that good idea pop out.
An odd thing about me, I like drug stories. So I should have been in this movie’s corner from the get go. But I wasn’t because the writing was so poor that it didn’t hook me in. As for that punch, you mean you didn’t see that coming from two reels away? It was so obvious that I almost groaned when it happened.
3. Alex says:
Hi guys, just seen movie and enjoyed it, thouroughly. Todd you have made some intersting comments. I take it you are a teacher? in the states? here in England the beauocracy surrounding the teaching world is truly enough to make you want to start a drug addiction let alone actually “teaching”. If Half Nelson was anything else then what it has shown us it would either turn into a “Drug” movie (lets face it that would be bad) or simply an educational documentary that you would find on teachers tv. I agree with the “not only a single actor or music can save a film” but on this occasion i think it does.
4. Todd says:
Well, we can agree to disagree. Gosling’s performance and the outstanding music aside, a bad script killed this film.
Bureaucracy is thick in the States, too, but that’s no justification for this movie.
5. Kit De Luca says:
I felt like there were some unfinished plots. I agree, they never really do show the cause of addiction. They never show him struggling to balance teaching and being an addict. They also never get deep into his personal life. I mean, they show his crappy apartment. The apartment that’s half empty and looks like he moved in it a month ago. I didn’t like that about the movie. What did like, was how they showed the affect of the little girl. They showed her story, and went into detail about everything she felt. The ending was horrible. It was complete bullshit. It seemed like it only ended because they ran out of film.
I’m a non-teacher and knew that what he was teaching wasn’t anything that anyone in 8th grade learns in class. None my teachers ever would have those discussions because they’d feel the class as a whole wasn’t ready for that, wasn’t mature enough to have those discussions, and wouldn’t have even thought it was school appropriate. SO I agree with the both of you on your views of the movie.
1. Dan Meyer says:
[8/19/2007 - 7:08 pm]
C’mon Todd-man. No way Gosling’s wandering the back of the room, slobbering over himself, blabbering about “dialetics” to a class of bored eighth graders and Ryan Fleck’s telling us: “this is what a good teacher is.”
Teachers having been hating on Half Nelson lately ’cause they’re under the mistaken impression it’s about teaching. Which it ain’t. What it’s about is addiction. And it goes about what it’s about really really well, building to an emotional gut-punch I’m still reeling from months later. (Ya better know the one I’m talking about.)
So yeah, as a teaching movie, Half Nelson scores 2 outta 5. As a romantic-comedy, Half Nelson scores 2 outta 5 also. Worst historical epic I’ve seen all year too.