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

Blackboard Jungle

 

BLACKBOARD JUNGLE           B                                                                                            USA  (101 mi)  1955  d:  Richard Brooks

We, in the United States, are fortunate to have a school system that is a tribute to our communities and to our faith in American youth. Today we are concerned with juvenile delinquency--its causes--and its effects. We are especially concerned when this delinquency boils over into our schools. The scenes and incidents depicted here are fictional. However, we believe that public awareness is a first step toward a remedy for any problem. It is in this spirit and with this faith that Blackboard Jungle was produced.                                                              —Introduction prior to opening credits

A contentious film about juvenile delinquency, an outdated term that’s not even used much anymore, changed to juvenile offenders, perhaps due to the proliferation of inner city guns, where murder rates are through the roof, with so many juveniles placed in adult prisons, but the term was all the rage in the conformism of the 1950’s, made just a year after the 1954 landmark Supreme Court decision Brown vs. Board of Education ordering the desegregation of American public schools, sending flocks of white parents out into the safer suburbs to avoid blacks and what they viewed as the inner city riff-raff.  Though heavy handed and overly bombastic, with almost non-existent character development, and glaring contrivances as a substitute for a social message, the film remains one of Hollywood’s most iconic depictions of deviant American youth, with South London screenings provoking vandalism and riots in the theaters by disenchanted teenagers known as the Teddy Boys, thuggish, working class white hoodlums known for making unprovoked attacks on blacks and newly arriving immigrant groups, viewing them as a threat to their already disintegrating communities.  Whatever you may think about it, the film was extremely controversial for its day, shocking contemporary audiences with revelations on teenage violence, sexuality, and racial antagonism, provoking discussions about the need to improve public education in America.  Adapted from the 1954 novel by Evan Hunter, aka Ed McBain, a noted crime fiction writer who embellished his substitute teaching experiences at a Bronx Vocational High School in New York City, claiming none of the depicted incidents actually occurred, but were “within the realm of realistic plausibility.”  Nonetheless, the topic was hailed by Time magazine as “nightmarish but authentic,” while the Saturday Review called it “the most realistic account I have ever read of life in a New York City vocational high school,” creating a moral panic about troubled youth in postwar America, with movie reviews focused on the more sensational aspects of the film, creating tabloid headlines warning us of the coming Apocalypse, where the film was debated, denounced, banned, and scapegoated for its violent content, denounced by teachers and principals, banned in Memphis, Tennessee and Atlanta, Georgia, claiming it was “immoral, obscene, licentious and will adversely affect the peace, health, morals and good order of the city,” screenings in New Jersey included a disclaimer that what’s depicted onscreen does NOT reflect local schools in the area, a Boston theater ran the first reel in silence for fear that the rock ‘n’ roll music on the soundtrack would over-stimulate audiences into violence, while U.S. Ambassador to Italy, Clare Boothe Luce, fearful of potential communist propaganda, prevented the film’s screening at the Venice Film Festival, claiming it was not representative of American values.  The film remains something of a cultural artifact from a forgotten era, literally frozen in time, certainly viewed differently with a modernist lens.  This is the first instance when a movie propelled a rock ‘n’ roll song to the top of the charts, where the jolting music of Bill Haley & the Comets “Rock Around the Clock” became a mainstream cultural phenomenon, Blackboard Jungle/Rock around the clock - YouTube (1:20), the first rock song to ever hit #1, selling 25 million copies, staying in the Top 100 for 38 weeks, specifically targeting a teen audience, with American Bandstand’s Dick Clark calling it “the national anthem of rock ‘n’ roll,” which at the time was blamed for “causing” juvenile delinquency.  There were also debates (particularly overseas) suggesting the film’s promotion of rock ‘n’ roll music was equally responsible for corrupting America’s youth, yet despite an overall tone of melodrama mixed with realism, one immediately senses just from the opening scene that this is a fantasia into public education, (macho guys holding hands and dancing with other macho guys just ain’t macho), a lead-in to the artful lyrics of Stephen Sondheim’s American musical WEST SIDE STORY (1961), originally staged in the summer of 1957,  West Side Story - Gee Officer Krupke! (1961) HD - YouTube (4:05), mockingly suggesting “Juvenile delinquency is purely a social disease.”  The film is also notable for launching the career of actor Sidney Poitier, who at age 28 plays one of the high school teenagers.  Ironically, he played a doctor five years earlier in No Way Out (1950).      

The film is a product of its times, an era when there were hundreds of teen gangs roaming the streets of New York City creating a wide array of vandalism and violence, when nearly 24% of American children ages 14 to 17 were not attending school at all, and 54% of students entering high school in the State of New York did not graduate, with reports also revealing that 50% of the male population in the Chicago public schools in 1953 were functionally illiterate.  In addition, incidents of teacher brutality against children were not uncommon, with children having little recourse other than dropping out.  In 1951, nearly 41% of all grade school teachers in America had no college degrees, with estimates in New York City that less than half even held teaching certificates, so the postwar state of American education was in dire straits, with this film serving as a public wake up call, putting the entire system on notice.  Like a plague spreading across the nation, the release of the film led to U.S. Senate subcommittee hearings chaired by Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver, school board meetings, and plenty of talk festering about teenage dissent, gathering opinions from various experts, psychologists, child behavior professionals, and university researchers, including the harebrained suggestion that comic books led to the corruption of youthful minds, mirroring the post-McCarthyist hunt for subversive Communists lurking within, ignoring the rapid spread of racism that was ravaging through the urban expansion into suburbia, which were basically white-only places of refuge to escape the inner cities, setting up model schools that became distinguished by the quality of teaching and school districts that were flush with money, as opposed to the massively underfunded inner city schools that were largely ignored, becoming dilapidated relics of a failed system, eventually leading to a school-to-prison pipeline for predominately minority students.  It’s important to understand that the so-called remedy for this scourge of delinquency spreading across the nation was to accentuate a two-tiered system, one for the rich and one for the poor, an approach that continues to exist today.  In 1978 voters in California rebelled against funding public schools through the implementation of Proposition 13, dramatically lowering the tax base, leading a tax revolt that spread across the nation, literally decimating inner city public schools, gutting their resources, putting them at a decisive educational disadvantage, where today the everyday realities in largely minority inner city schools resemble decrepit conditions in Third World countries, driving wealthy kids into private schools reserved for the rich, while the expansive schools in the predominately white suburbs continue to flourish, with some resembling college universities.  This two-tiered system also translates into two unequal systems of justice and opportunity, which only accentuates the racial divide haunting our nation at the moment.  This film, however, feeds into the common stereotypical perception of minority criminalization, where minorities are viewed as criminals.  All the well-meaning teachers are white, while the out-of-control class in question is of mixed race, white, Latino, and black, mirroring the possibilities of desegregation, yet it’s viewed as a social experiment gone wrong, creating a disturbing atmosphere of social defiance and disobedience, contaminated by an element of criminalization.  All are tainted by the same broad brush, even if those most guilty are actually white, which actually matches a continuing perception of today, with whites mistakenly believing blacks are responsible for the majority of crimes committed in America, as if justifying their racial apprehension, yet the overwhelming majority are committed by whites, with more than double the amount of arrests and more than two-thirds of charged criminal offenses annually (FBI — Table 43).

Set in the all-boys North Manual Trades High School of New York, an inner city working class milieu, the film simmers with anxiety about race and how that translates to an American educational system that feels woefully inadequate.  Glenn Ford plays Richard Dadier, a Navy vet who got his education on the G.I. Bill, a naïve yet liberal-minded white teacher at a new mixed race school that is largely a collection of stereotypes, approaching the first day with a certain amount of apprehension, where all around him he sees examples of unruly behavior, where he is challenged right from the outset.  While the principal, Mr. Warnecke (John Hoyt), insists there is no discipline problem, all the evidence proves otherwise, where some of the indifferent teachers describe the school as “the garbage can of the educational system,” while calling these kids “savages” and “screaming animals,” suggesting there is no hope for them, as teaching methods are simply ignored.  As if on cue, one of the teachers is attacked in a brutal rape assault, with Didier coming to her rescue, then beating the tar out of the attacking kid, who leaves escorted by the police in a bloody mess.  His students aren’t too happy about that, refusing to cooperate in class, where traditional teaching methods immediately hit a wall of resistance, with students intentionally answering incorrectly followed by a series of smart remarks, making jokes about his name, calling him “Mr. Daddy-O.”  Sensing rebelliousness in their ranks, he attempts to single out an ally in one of the brighter students, Gregory Miller (Sidney Poitier), thinking if he could get one to cooperate the others would follow, but Miller has no interest in being anyone’s prized favorite, retreating into the disharmony of the class, refusing to stick out like a sore thumb.  Dadier and a new math teacher, Joshua Edwards (Richard Kiley), commiserate over drinks after work, with Edwards expressing an interest in bringing his prized jazz collection to school for his more advanced students, suggesting mathematics are a key component to jazz music, thinking his kids would take an interest, but his plan backfires when both men are assaulted in an alley by a group of students afterwards (payback for the earlier incident), and again when Artie West (Vic Morrow, doing his best Brando imitation) and his gang of goons decide to teach Edwards a lesson by sadistically throwing his records around in a game of keepaway before destroying his entire collection, leaving Edwards devastated, quitting his job shortly afterwards in a state of utter despair.  Dadier tries a similar technique, playing a 16mm cartoon projection of Jack and the Beanstalk, which does generate plenty of interest and enthusiasm, asking engaging questions afterwards, suggesting even a cartoon can get them to learn to think for themselves, thinking he may finally be breaking through, but he’s stymied on several fronts.  Unbeknownst to him, his pregnant wife (Anne Francis) starts receiving anonymous letters followed by prank phone calls suggesting her husband was having an affair with one of the teachers, causing her extreme anxiety, almost losing the baby in a premature birth (in the book the child dies).  Another student files a complaint against Dadier for his use of inflammatory racist language during a lesson, including the n-word, called into a conference with Mr. Warnecke, suspected of having racial motives, with Dadier angrily denouncing the accusations, suggesting the words were used as an example of what “not” to say.  In today’s politically correct culture, the teacher would be fired anyway, regardless of their intent.  It’s Poitier who provides the saving grace, heard singing and harmonizing the Negro spiritual “Go Down Moses” with several other black friends, almost like an apparition, The Blackboard Jungle (1955) – Leading The Group - YouTube (2:28).  Despite the apparent peace offering, Dadier faces more resistance in class when he catches West cheating in class, building to an inevitable confrontation, with West pulling a switchblade in defiance, leading to the dramatic spectacle of a knife fight.  This heavy handed approach is overly simplistic, setting the moral forces of good against evil, like the arrival of the cavalry, suggesting if you can remove the bad apples the rest will flourish, which is a technique still being used today, where there are record numbers of expulsions, routinely targeting minorities.  If only it were that easy, continuing the fantasy narrative by suggesting it is, becoming more of a cultural time capsule than a relevant social treatise, added to the National Film Registry in 2016.