Surviving a Half-Nelson

Half Nelson is an honest and elegantly understated drama about a disillusioned and self-destructive teacher whose relationship with a precocious student inspires him to reclaim his own wayward life.

The film stars Ryan Gosling as a young man handicapped by the conflicting forces of idealism and cynicism, and Shareeka Epps, as his pragmatic but hopeful student. Rounding out this collection of exciting young talent are director/writer Ryan Fleck and producer/co-writer Anna Boden, filmmakers who transport us to the edgy urban landscape that is the setting for this fresh, provocative, and emotionally-charged story about friendship and the possibility of redemption in an unforgiving world.
In professional wrestling, a “Half-Nelson” is an immobilizing hold that is difficult, if not impossible, to escape. Fleck and Boden saw the title as a metaphor for being stuck in an uncomfortable position, which is exactly where they place their protagonist, Dan Dunne (Gosling), at the beginning of the film. Dunne is a charismatic history teacher who has the power to transform the lives of his teenage students. Although his school is in a desolate part of Brooklyn, where everything is drab and depressed, Dunne’s classroom is an oasis of enlightenment. When he teaches, he is animated, smart, strong, and completely in control. But Dunne’s personal life borders on the tragic. The suffocating “half-nelson” he cannot escape is his drug addiction. The siren’s call of the crack pipe helps him to forget the terrible truths that haunt him every day: that ideals die, that life presents more dead ends than open doors, and that recovery is always beckoning but never quite attainable.
Yet, Half Nelson is not a story about addiction. The film explores universal political and philosophical themes, such as the impotence of idealism and the failure of the liberal dream. The characters discover - and we learn by watching them - how individuals can succeed where movements fail.
After attending New York University Film School, Fleck and Boden were eager to begin their first feature project. They wrote Half Nelson in early 2002. With little money or resources to produce the feature, they decided to refashion their story into a short script and shoot it on digital video with friends and local kids as their cast and crew. Half Nelson was re-titled Gowanus, Brooklyn after the industrial Brooklyn neighborhood they were living in at the time.
The short was an impressive debut for the young filmmakers, who won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival.
Encouraged to move ahead with their feature film, Fleck and Boden gave the script to Ryan Gosling, star of “The Believer” and “The Notebook,” hoping he would play Dan Dunne - the idealistic, but severely flawed, inner-city junior high school teacher. Fleck knew that Gosling was a perfect fit for Dunne, despite being considerably younger than the role had initially been written. “He had a quiet intensity with the potential to erupt at any moment, which was thrilling to watch,” Fleck recalls. He and Boden met with Gosling and they discussed the project. It became clear to them that Gosling, who gravitates toward challenging roles, felt an immediate connection to the material.
Gosling took his role so seriously that he was determined to build his performance from the ground up. He moved to New York over a month before shooting was scheduled to start and immersed himself in the life of his character. Gosling lived in a small sublet apartment in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn and spent time in a junior high school classroom, shadowing 8th grade teacher David Easton to prepare for his role. Easton taught with the kind of passion that Gosling hoped to capture in his character and observing his class was even more useful than Gosling had hoped.
Gosling’s meeting with Easton was serendipitous for another reason as well. “Ryan (Gosling) told me to meet him at the school,” said Boden. “So, when I got to the classroom, I saw Ryan coming to get the door for me. Only, Ryan was sitting down in the back of the classroom. Turns out, Mr. Easton was Ryan’s doppleganger.” Still looking for someone to play the role of Dan Dunne’s brother, Fleck and Boden happily cast Easton in the part.
Dunne’s fascination with Hegel’s theories of dialectics - a topic he discusses repeatedly in his classroom - was inspired by Fleck’s father, a traffic engineer for the city of San Francisco. Curious about dialectics, Gosling spent several hours on the phone discussing philosophy with the director’s father. “After that conversation, Ryan was kind of blown away. He said they only scratched the surface and wanted to learn more,” Fleck says. “The great thing about Ryan is that he’s always digging deeper. He has an immense desire to learn and grow.”
The other pivotal role in Half Nelson is Drey (short for Audrey), the remarkable young girl who inspires Gosling’s character to care about her and, ultimately, to care about himself. Drey had to be wise and naïve at the same time, a challenge for a fledgling actress. When casting their feature, the filmmakers returned to Shareeka Epps, who played the part in Gowanus, Brooklyn. While making the short, Fleck and Boden had visited local performing arts schools and urged students to attend their open auditions. “One girl stood out among the rest,” Boden remembers. “She had wonderful presence and didn’t behave like other actor kids. She was just a normal kid with a great mix of innocence and tough street smarts.”
The filmmakers rehearsed extensively with Gosling and Epps. “More than reading from the script, I thought the important thing was to just get to know each other. We spent a lot of time hanging out, going to fun places like the New York Hall of Science, and letting Ryan and Shareeka develop a relationship on their own,” Fleck recalls. The astonishing chemistry between Gosling and Epps is what makes their unusual friendship credible. Gosling fills the screen with a rousing intelligence, wit, and urgency, while Epps manages to establish her presence with a striking intensity and maturity beyond her years. Only her Toostie Pop, which she carries like a security blanket, reminds us that she is still a child. But she will not be a child much longer. It is time for Drey to make some important decisions about the direction her life will take.
An important third character in Half Nelson is Frank, a slick and successful drug dealer who takes an interest in Drey because he was responsible for landing her older brother in prison. Frank, played with great authority and charm by Anthony Mackie, is the polar opposite of Dan Dunne. He has all of the lucidity that Gosling’s conflicted character does not have, but none of the ideals. The path he offers Drey - a shortcut to money and independence, albeit as a drug-runner - has undeniable appeal.
The fact that there are no easy choices or answers for any of the characters is a testimony to director Ryan Fleck’s ability to infuse his work with veracity, complexity, and moral shading. Characters are fully-realized, complete with histories, and their situations have the authenticity of life. In fact, Fleck sidesteps the typical film school graduate’s tendency to portray life as filtered through movies, with flashy, movie-inspired techniques. Instead, he boldly makes a head-on film about life itself - ultra-realistic and performance-based - capturing all the details of existence in a rundown Brooklyn neighborhood. It is a place where the future can never be taken for granted. Cinematographer Andrij Parekh complements Fleck’s vision by shooting in a style that is probing and intimate. Despite the fact that New York is one of the world’s most photographed cities, the Brooklyn landscape, with its low buildings and open spaces, appears fresh and unusual in the film.
Midway through the writing process, a friend turned the filmmakers on to the music of popular indie rock band, Broken Social Scene. “Certain scenes were actually inspired by their music,” says Boden,
“We decided to play it on set to help establish a mood.” In post-production, Fleck and Boden, who also worked as Half Nelson’s editor, used the band’s music throughout the film, even though they were unsure they would be able to use it in the final version. “We eventually got a rough cut of the movie to the band, and fortunately for us, they loved it!” says Fleck.
Half Nelson is a film that fearlessly tackles history, politics, philosophy, psychology, and issues of modern morality with a passion and a fierce intelligence born of youth. Filmmakers Fleck and Boden and young talents Gosling and Epps deliver a film that restores hope and belief in humanity to its characters and to its audience. It is possible, as Dan Dunne finds when he establishes a bond with his student, to change the world, one life at a time.