Ryan Gosling in a scene from the movie 'Half Nelson'.
Following the thread of films related to education, today I want to comment on this film performed by Ryan Gosling, in one of his most dramatic roles, playing a teacher who has run out of ideals and sinks into one of the main problems of today ... drugs.
'Half nelson'is a 2006 film directed by Ryan Fleck, whose cast led: Ryan Gosling, Shareeka Epps, Anthony Mackie, Monique Curnen, Tina Holmes, Collins Pennie, Jeff Lima, Nathan Corbett, Tyra Kwao-Vovo, Rosemary Ledee and Nicole Vicius , running the script from the hand of Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden.
The synopsis of the film tells us about Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling), a young teacher from a high school in the middle of Brooklyn whose high ideals fade and die in the face of reality. Day after day, in his rickety classroom, he somehow finds the energy with which to inspire his 13- and 14-year-old students to discuss everything from civil rights to civil war with renewed enthusiasm. In open opposition to the official program, and in favor of deeper and more penetrating treatment, Dan teaches his students what consequences change has, on a personal and historical scale, and how to think for themselves.
Without a doubt, this is not just another story in the teacher-student relationship. This is not the role to which we are accustomed to this genre of films, full of "example" teachers helping students in all kinds of situations, because in "Half Nelson" we find a desolate, abandoned teacher, who is not the "example", he is addicted to drugs and for him, teaching seems to be the last silver lining… He needs to believe in teaching in order not to sink.
On the other side of the role, in that of the students, there is a girl who soon establishes a relationship more friendly than educational with him, and who is also marked by the demons of her life, of her family, she is also a defeated one. There are no heroes in this film, whose rawness and reality is evident in every scene and that it was not for nothing that it earned its protagonist a well-deserved Oscar nomination for best actor. The film reflects the extreme loneliness in which the teacher and the student find themselves, and opens the door of hope to see if they can overcome it or not.
