Half Nelson
WHAT
HALF NELSON
WHERE
PALACE VERONA, PALACE NORTON STREET AND GREATER UNION GEORGE STREET
WHEN
RELEASED APR 25
WATCH THE TRAILER
HERE
Oh Captain my Captain! There are no victims in this classroom! Everyone complains about Hollywood’s love of remakes, but no one bats an eyelid at the exact same stories being told, year after year. A favourite? The struggling, idiosyncratic teacher who inspires a ragtag class of students by showing, for example, how Shakespeare is really just like MELROSE PLACE.
But in the new American indie HALF NELSON, the teacher isn’t encouraging his students to stay clean – he’s struggling ineffectually with his own drug problem. When he says that the kids keep him sane, you know it’s not true, but also that he desperately wants it to be. Ryan Gosling’s performance is remarkable, almost washing him clean of teenage sighs leftover from his romantic role in THE NOTEBOOK.
Shot almost entirely handheld, in under a month, HALF NELSON takes clichés and turns them back into poetry. It occasionally piles on unnecessary bleakness, but as Gosling’s history teacher strikes up an out-of-school relationship with a 13 year-old student, it is awkward, complicated, and genuinely touching.
Format: Cinema
Mood: Rad
Keywords: America, Ryan Gosling, Ryan Fleck
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