Half-Nelson

 

Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden

HALF-NELSON        A                                                                                                                   USA  (106 mi)  2006  d: Ryan Fleck

There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop, and you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.                            —Mario Salvo, student activist and leader of the Free Speech Movement at a rally in UC-Berkeley, California after the students seized control of an administrative building on campus, 1964

Reminiscent of Jon Voight’s empathetic humaneness in Martin Ritt’s CONRACK (1974), yet also the anguished impressionistic journey in Lynne Ramsay’s MORVERN CALLAR (2002), which takes place nearly entirely inside someone’s head, this is a muddled odyssey through the present day and age, as seen through the eyes of a sympathetic white 8th grade teacher in a predominately black inner-city school in Brooklyn, who scores crack on the side and thinks he can handle the situation.  While teaching history, he asks his students to explore the two opposing forces that confront one another in determining change, as “Everything is made of opposing forces” and “turning points,” both sides fighting for what they believe is right, which he contends is the catalyst or determining factor of history.  Yet it’s also seen through the eyes of a young student in his class who actually catches him smoking crack in the bathroom, but is sympathetic and keeps her mouth shut, as her brother is in prison for selling crack, while the dealer, in a favor to the brother for not turning him in, owes her family.  An expansion of Fleck’s short film GOWANUS, BROOKLYN (2004), as it takes place in the abandoned lots and desolate streets of an ungentrified Brooklyn neighborhood near the Gowanus Canal, co-written by the director and his live-in partner Anna Boden, who also edited and produced the film, Ryan Gosling (in his first Oscar nomination) is unerringly believable as the teacher, Dan Dunne, who isn’t selling anything in the classroom except the freedom to speak one’s own mind while making their own choices, though he’s held on a tight leash by the school principal, often appearing in class in a disheveled state from his previous late night binges.  His open defiance of authority and institutions raises red flags, as he frequently veers away from the “official” curriculum, yet that’s what’s so compelling about this film, as a teacher’s moral dilemma in the classroom comes down to a struggle to do what’s right as opposed to being blindly told what to teach by an often faceless administrative entity.  And while his own choice selection is hazardous, not to mention personally destructive, this issue is not side-stepped in the film, and his deplorable behavior is a force to be reckoned with, including a drunkenly pathetic attempted rape scene, but so is his commitment to stick with these kids, to be honest and not sell them a bill of goods.  Thinking that he can write a children’s book about dialectics on the side, instead he spends all his free time getting wasted, seemingly without friends, with no stable relationships, remaining aloof and emotionally disconnected.  The title is a reference to an immobilizing wrestling hold that is difficult, if not impossible, to escape from, evoking a metaphoric sense of entrapment.  Born out of a frustration with the malaise hanging over America following 9/11 and the Iraq War, this film is about a developing friendship between an adult and a child, with each taking turns taking care of each other, avoiding any overt sexual overtones, as Shareeka Epps plays the inquisitive Drey, a 13-year old latch-key student caught between moving forces, a dead end school, a tired single mother who works too hard to have any time for her, a brother in prison, a dealer that offers money and protection, and a white teacher who, despite his personal problems, actually makes sense.  Her hesitation in exploring each world is the heart and soul of the film, as she’s remarkably appealing, tough and soft at the same time, with an open mind to finding a new way other than the route of her brother or the dealer, but she doesn’t know where to find it.  An amalgamation of race, class, idealism, and self-destruction, with a nod to the rebellious instincts yet surprising honesty of J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, the film is also about finding forgiveness.     

The always compelling Anthony Mackie plays Frank the dealer, and in the model of Coppola’s THE GODFATHER (1972), which features likeable men who kill for a living, or Craig Brewer’s HUSTLE AND FLOW (2005), which features a likeable, hard-working man who pimps for a living, Mackie has his own appeal, is soft-spoken and considerate, and doesn’t push Drey too hard while gently attempting to persuade her to take over her brother’s business, luring her deeper into his world.  When Dan sees the paternal and potentially dangerous influence, he attempts to intervene, and in an especially effective scene, he confronts Frank in front of his own home and tries to steer him away from Drey, but realizes he’s hardly the role model to be making this request, as his example is no better.  Frank, in a masterful stroke of understated psychological swagger, completely takes the air out of his sails, and therein lies the real complexity of the film.  When have drug dealers been painted with ambiguity and complexity?  And if we’re to be honest, how can we blame black dealers for being dealers, considering the bleak economic options in their ravaged communities and the lure of a lucrative lifestyle?  In fact, what drives the demand for dealers in the first place?  Who are the biggest drug consumers?  In America, it turns out to be the comfortable middle class whites, who may be in denial about the consequences of their actions, like Dan in this film, believing he can handle it, while remaining oblivious to the economic disparity between blacks and whites, and the social injustice contrasted between the races, considering who the police routinely target.  But this film places the responsibility front and center on the white middle class, on the Baby Boomers, the ones who marched against the war in Vietnam, or for voting rights in the South, the ones who supposedly offered an alternate moral view, as reflected by the black and white newsreel footage that Dan shows his kids, such as Attica, where, with the exception of the Indian massacres of the 19th century, the police assault on prison inmates and their hostages was the bloodiest one-day encounter between Americans since the Civil War, or the assassination of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected representative in the U.S, or Cesar Chavez, whose boycotts helped establish rights and benefits for migrant farm workers, or America’s CIA advocating the overthrow and assassination of a freely elected leader of Chile, Salvador Allende, replacing him with a U.S. puppet, General Augusto Pinochet, now up on war crimes charges, while Henry Kissinger expressed the U.S. view that the issue was too important to leave to the Chilean people, or Mario Savio leading the Berkeley free speech rally, with students suggesting they could help open up a crack in “the Machine.”  Why believe in a system that takes away your rights, or takes away your freedom?  While explaining to his students the ways they are oppressed by the system, that the Civil Rights movement is essentially about the injustice of the system, where protests were created to expose that unfairness and have their voices finally heard, Dan, a true child of the 60’s, one of the most misunderstood decades in the movies, makes the connection that by truthfully analyzing the problems of the past, which all of us are a part of, we might find some clues into how to solve these problems in the future.  Like disillusioned characters in a Jean Eustache film, whatever happened to this moral optimism from the 60’s, this belief that people could work together to fight against social injustice?  Everything’s become so comfortably compartmentalized now, so specialized, each looking after only their own interests, which is the modern era status quo, there’s no longer any belief that we are all in this together or that concerted action can make a difference. 

This kind of film could never be made today, where a wave of censorship and conservatism has not only swept across the country, but around the world, as corporate sponsors would never approve of overt drug use and the message that sends, completely missing the larger point of making such a daring and provocative film.  So rather than allow viewers to learn from a film like this, it’s instead tossed into the dustbin of history, like an ancient relic.  Radically departing from the cliché of historical cinematic educators who appear in the teacher savior role, this completely subverts that genre, as Dunne’s left-leaning political orientation stands in stark contrast to those seen in other teacher films, as there are no miracle transformations happening here, with kids seen sleeping in his class, or missing altogether, and no one is spared from the looming trauma of the streets, even the teacher, whose personal struggles with drug use complicate his classroom impact, yet there is a sense of triumph over adversity, with just the briefest hint of hope, choosing moral complexity over easy solutions.  Enhanced by the edgy, somewhat vacuous style, the film at times resembles an amorphous blur, yet it’s grounded in the raw vulnerability of several brilliant dramatic performances, shot on gritty 16mm, often in tight close-ups by Andrij Parekh, capturing every emotional nuance.  But identifying with the film isn’t easy, as it’s disjointed, sometimes out of focus, and the handheld camera keeps physically being knocked around a bit, so there’s a rough quality, a mood of ambiguity, with occasional eerie industrial or electronic sounds along with a psychologically probing indie soundtrack by Canada’s Broken Social Scene.  Despite the film’s unsparingly honest, near documentary style, never lapsing into cheap sentiment, it occasionally departs from naturalism, such as a noticeable scene when Drey visits her brother in prison, which takes place in perfect quiet, unlike the raucous noise that is typical of overcrowded prisons today, or when the students stare straight into the camera and repeat memorized moments in history, like similar set-up scenes in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977), but it also perfectly captures the wretched state of Dan’s wasted mind when a proud parent comes up to him in a bar to thank him for his daughter’s success at Georgetown and he can’t even remember her.  Still, this accurately points out how badly we need good teachers with challenging, inquisitive minds like Dan in the public school system, despite his obvious damaged goods, as his painful honesty is heartfelt and believable, made all the more compelling because the unconventional person behind the message is so openly flawed.  Kids remember being in his class, and not the automatons pushing standardized testing that school boards would prefer, as he is not condescending, yet Dan finds it difficult to find a balance between the demons of his dark personal life and the positive outlook needed to plant the seeds of discovery and self-realization in the classroom. The power dynamic between the teacher and student is inverted in this film, as the wisdom and maturity Drey exhibits in reaching out a hand of friendship, particularly during Dan’s heavy descent into drugs, is something we don’t normally see, actually finding a connection and a chance at redemption.  Born to radical parents on a commune in Berkeley, and growing up in the same area, director Ryan Fleck shares much in common with Dan’s travails, as picking up on the residue of leftover 60’s themes comes with paying a high price for disillusionment, where the loss of that collective spirit feels so defeating, as the crushing reality is that the catastrophic circumstances that so many of these kids come from are not getting any better, despite all good intentions.  This film begins to explore finding a way out by linking some of our cultural connections to our human imperfections, by literally building a bridge of mutual tolerance.  Well worth a look, as you won’t find anything like this in theaters today.   

The film that changed my life: Ryan Fleck | Do the Right Thing  Ryan Fleck from The Guardian, April 17, 2010

Song to Song

Ryan Gosling and Rooney Mara on the set

 

Director Terrence Malick and Rooney Mara on the set

 

Director Terrence Malick and Natalie Portman on the set

 

Director Terrence Malick and Ryan Gosling on the set

 

Director Terrence Malick

 

SONG TO SONG            C              

USA  (129 mi)  2017  ‘Scope  d:  Terrence Malick                Official site

The woods had vanished; the earth was a waste of shadow.  No sound broke the silence of the wintry landscape.  No cock crowed; no smoke rose; no train moved.  A man without a self, I said.  A heavy body leaning on a gate.  A dead man.  With dispassionate despair, with entire disillusionment, I surveyed the dust dance; my life, my friends’ lives, and those fabulous presences, men with brooms, women writing, the willow tree by the river—clouds and phantoms made of dust too, of dust that changed, as clouds lose and gain and take gold or red and lose their summits and billow this way and that, mutable, vain.  I, carrying a notebook, making phrases, had recorded mere changes; a shadow.  I had been sedulous to take note of shadows.  How can I proceed now, I said, without a self, weightless and visionless, through a world weightless, without illusion?                       

—The Waves, by Virginia Woolf, 1931,  THE WAVES - Project Gutenberg Australia

Filmed back to back with Knight of Cups (2015), essentially the same film in a different context, arguably the least successful film over the course of his career, where, above all others, it has an air of pretension about it, showing no artistic growth, as it’s covering the exact same territory as his previous film, where too much of the same thing has dulled the senses in Malick films, continuing in a similar abstract, non-narrative stylization, where this is the only Malick film that actually felt painful to watch, as actors are constantly forced to spontaneously perform in front of the camera, to improvise and supposedly be interesting, yet it becomes excruciatingly painful to watch, as shooting without a script, it seems more like screen test shots, loose reflections of differing personalities captured before a camera, where they are playing out moods instead of developing characters.  Over the course of two hours, the professional limits of these actors are exposed, as their attempts at spontaneity become repetitive, where instead of a liberating experience, they feel more and more boxed in by their own human limitations, falling instead of flying, where it actually becomes uncomfortable to watch after a while, as they feebly resort to many of the same gestures and acting techniques over and over again.  While Malick continually resorts to a mosaic of impressionistic moments, finding beauty in the moment, where throughout the duration he is constantly changing the focus of attention, adding a stream-of-conscious narrative that is driven by fleeting images accompanied by haunting interior monologues that do form a more recognizable storyline, the truth is that our distanced unfamiliarity with the same characters and cinematic techniques do not grow or evolve over time, where this feels more like an exercise in futility, with viewers continually forced to beat their heads against a wall in protest.  Shot in Austin during the 2012 Austin City Limits Music Festival, there is a thread of indie music that plays throughout, along with cameos from rock icons Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Johnny Rotten, and members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, where the normally reclusive director conducted a Q & A interview along with actor Michael Fassbender hosted by resident director Richard Linklater following a screening just a few weeks ago at the SXSW Film Festival, Michael Fassbender & Terrence Malick talk about "Song To Song" at the SXSW (Austin, Texas) (31:38), and while nothing earthshaking is revealed, it is one of the few public interviews Malick has ever granted.   

This would have to be considered the Malick “Museum period,” as the director, through ace cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki in their fifth consecutive collaboration since The New World (2005), continually shoots extravagant, museum-like dwellings with glass floor-to-ceiling windows, looking completely immaculate, like super luxury accommodations featured in Architectural Digest magazine, set in beautiful locations with elaborate outdoor fountains or in this case, elegant infinity pools overlooking Lake Travis or the Colorado River, which both converge in Austin, where nothing is ever out of place, resembling an intoxicating, dreamlike image of unlimited wealth, where this is as far from a working class environment as one could find, inhabited by the so-called beautiful people who control the industry.  But instead of a scathing satire on Los Angeles and the Hollywood movie industry, consumed in artifice and superficiality, this is described as an experimental romantic drama filled with music, originally entitled Weightless from the Virginia Woolf passage, yet despite the title and the outdoor rock music setting, the film is not really about the music festival, though as Malick put it, “You can’t live in Austin and escape the music,” serving only as a backdrop for a larger story about the fleeting connectivity of our lives, shown through a series of random moments, as one character (Rooney Mara) puts it, “living moment to moment, song to song, kiss to kiss,” which may explain why so many different songs and locations are used in the film, where what’s shown onscreen are only brief fragments of a much larger picture that remains unseen, that each viewer must imagine for themselves, where perhaps a common theme heard throughout is the Delta blues song, “Rollin’ and Tumblin’,” Elmore James - Rollin' and Tumblin' - YouTube (2:27). 

Well, I rolled and I tumbled, cried the whole night long
Well, I woke up this mornin’, didn’t know right from wrong

Featuring a cavalcade of stars, including Michael Fassbender, Ryan Gosling, Natalie Portman, Rooney Mara, Cate Blanchett, Holly Hunter, and a strange appearance from Val Kilmer, where three women are Academy Award winners, the film doesn’t really have a story, and isn’t meant to, as there was never any guarantee any of the scenes would be used, with Malick filming them continuously, even when they weren’t acting, in keeping with his theme of spontaneity, with many not making the final cut, including Christian Bale, Benicio del Toro, Trevante Rhodes, Haley Bennett and others, including music groups Arcade Fire and Iron & Wine.  The film basically follows people on the periphery of the industry, Faye (Rooney Mara), herself a budding songwriter, seen early on having a JULES AND JIM (1962) style flirtatious relationship with two men, BV (Ryan Gosling), an up and coming songwriter and musician that she meets at a party, and Cook (Michael Fassbender), a wealthy record producer that is trying to sign him.  In Malick’s experimental phase, one never needs to buy into the religion or philosophy being discussed onscreen, as that’s all part of the transitional process “on becoming,” where artistically one delves under the surface to explore as much as they can to better understand the changing world around us, and who better than this director to help guide us through an inquisitive existential journey?  But that feeling of Malick euphoria or exhilaration is never achieved in this film, feeling more like masochistic indulgence, as one never believes in the actual romance, and any dialogue that does exist is simplistically awkward and trivial, as what’s missing are the essential ingredients of a healthy relationship.  While Faye is seduced by them both, a relative novice in the music industry, “I tell myself any experience is better than no experience.  I wanted to live. Sing my song,” this romantic interplay quickly moves from a free-wheeling innocence to one of more serious consequences, yet there’s no underlying credibility that it’s ever about love, as the emotional currency is money and power, as personified by Cook, who is something of a snake of a human being, who’s personal mantra becomes, “The world wants to be deceived,” where there’s not a shred of commitment or even relationship connectivity, as there’s never an extended conversation, the kind of thing relationships actually need to sustain themselves, instead it’s shown as a flurry of brief moments, like walking in on the tail end of a conversation, where much of the film is reduced to recognizable sound bites.  This simply can’t replace the real thing, so what we see is a cheap imitation, where the vacuous emotional distance between characters is more evident than ever, where the personal discomfort associated with watching the film actually feeds into this perception.     

Near the end of the film, like something you might find in a Jarmusch film, Faye reads aloud a passage from William Blake’s poem The Divine Image from Songs of Innocence and of Experience, 1789:

For Mercy has a human heart
Pity, a human face:
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

It must be said that Malick as a director doesn’t do romance well.  While DAYS OF HEAVEN (1978) is in a class by itself, with a scintillatingly radiant Brooke Adams and a ruggedly handsome, young Richard Gere providing the thrust of the love story, BADLANDS (1973), The New World (2005), and To the Wonder (2012) may be his next best romantic efforts and in each instance love quickly collapses, as it simply has no foundation.  The same might be said for Kubrick, by the way, as both men are simply too ponderous, where their expertise is in exploring the stratosphere of thought and personal perception, where they are much better in visualizing the transcendence of the universe and the emotional chasms between people.  As she did in Knight of Cups (2015), the introduction of Natalie Portman as Rhonda sends the film into a downward trajectory.  A working class kindergarten teacher earning extra money waitressing, Cook decides to plant his hooks into her, dazzling her with the opulence of his home, making her his pet project, devoting all his time and energy in a larger-than-life courtship, finally convincing her to marry him, where we see glimpses of Holly Hunter as her more grounded but financially struggling mother, seemingly less impressed with Cook’s dazzling showmanship, even after he buys her a new home, where it’s all an act, a charade, as he soon makes a mockery of the marriage.  Consumed by three-way sexual trysts, stringing his wife along for the ride, even including prostitutes, becoming a sleazy portrait of Sodom and Gomorrah, he shows no regard whatsoever for the demoralizing effect this has on his wife, thinking only of himself, while she feels humiliated and ashamed.  Cook pulls the same con act on BV, making behind-the-back maneuvers that undermine his legitimacy, as he’s a conniving liar who will openly deceive you to your face, never showing an ounce of remorse.  While there’s an interesting connection to struggling parents, Faye’s father (Brady Coleman), ostracized from his own family, basically encourages her not to make the same mistakes that he made, while BV’s mother (Linda Emond) speaks out of turn, causing irreparable damage to an existing affair he’s having with Amanda (Cate Blanchett).  In fact, everyone sleeps around, with Faye having a girl-on-girl fling with the French-accented Zoey, Bérénice Marlohe, a James Bond girl in SKYFALL (2012), while BV has unfinished business with a former girlfriend Lykke (Swedish singer and fashion model Lykke Li), where personal betrayal becomes routine.  While there are side trips to Mexico, with a few days shot in the Yucatán, mulling around outdoor street scenes including food vendors, revealing a stark poverty in the daily lives of locals, each seems so willing to throw away their youth in the prime of their lives, finding it gone in the blink of an eye.  A montage of small moments, there’s really no compelling character in the bunch, so when they run astray, like Icarus flying too closely to the sun, there’s no real sense of tragedy or a feeling like something important has been lost, as there was not much of a connection to begin with.   One has to say it — this is downright average, on par with the rest of the bad movies.