Half Nelson

Ryan Gosling proves that his strong performance in The Believer was no fluke (and bids to become the next Ed Norton) in this exemplary indie from Ryan Fleck in partnership with Anna Boden. Gosling is a dedicated middle school history teacher and basketball coach, who happens to be a crackhead. He’s the sort of teacher who throws out the textbook and instructs his charges in Gowanus, Brooklyn (the title of the short film that paved the way for this feature) in the recent history of protest and the age-old process of dialectic. The film similarly instructs on the yin-yang interpenetration of good and bad in any character or situation. Danny Dunne (is the name of the character an homage to the children’s book hero of my youth? he of the anti-gravity paint, etc.?) meets his match in the 13-year-old student played flawlessly by Shareeka Epps, who is prematurely knowing in the drug trade, with her brother already in jail and herself being recruited as a replacement by his boss, played with appealing complication by Anthony Mackie. Will she become a “hopper,” in the lingo of The Wire (and indeed some of the kid actors from that magnificent HBO series appear here as well)? The in-tight, hand-held camerawork, no doubt dictated by the budget of this labor of love and youthful energy, conveys a sense of claustrophobic discomfort perfectly representative of the story. And the refusal to opt for easy resolution of scene or story betokens a realism of spirit as well as style. On IMDB there’s a picture of director Fleck, looking much like an earnest middle school teacher himself, on stage at Sundance in a t-shirt that reads simply in lower-case, “evildoer” -- which suggests the basic but complex sensibility of his film. In the face of the ruling mendacity of the film business, it’s easy to go overboard in praise of authenticity, but this is a film to see and wish for more of its ilk. (2006, Images, n.) *7* (MC-85.)