Alright, let’s take this baby for a spin. Give the movie a shot if you are so inclined.

I will post a review of Robert Sapolsky’s new philosophy book Determined (2023) in a separate post, however, one of his ideas expressed in the early chapters resonates well with one of the themes of Half Nelson (2006). The idea is that once you’re born into some bad luck, it does not even out in the end but rather amplifies further and further in life, dragging you down into the morass of karmic suffering. Some gene mutations you have no control over or the neighbourhood you were born in are powerful deciders of the content of your eulogy – if you are ever to have one. This darkness is a void in a sense, centred exactly where your soul is meant to be – draining away all the good intentions and deeds you do throughout your journey.

An inner city Brooklyn school teacher Daniel Dunne (played by the impeccable Ryan Gosling) is a drug addict. The opening scenes show Dan splayed in his dilapidated apartment in his undies, too tired to get up after an overnight binge of narcotics. Having forced himself off the floor, Dan gets dressed up to go to work to teach middle school kids his unconventional approach to understanding history through dialectics. If not for those kids, Dan’s breathless body would probably have been found in some drug den on the other side of town. Dan is not living for himself – there is not much there beyond a number of failed relationships and a call of the drug-induced euphoria; instead, he lives his life for the kids that may very well slide into the same abyss he finds himself in.

One of his students, a 13-year-old student Drey (played to a T by Shareeka Epps) catches him in a bathroom stall after a late-night basketball game they were destined to lose. Dan almost resembles a corpse in his gaunt appearance, but his sunken eye sockets reveal not a dead man, but a poor wretch in those Greek fables, punished by the Gods for some misdeed against his nature. Drey hands him a wet paper towel as per his request. He asks her to stay, but no tears are shed or monologues given. Yet that chance encounter in the bathroom stall changes both their respective Universes.

Drey is an outcast, too – she doesn’t have any friends, and her only family are her overworked mother, her brother Mike, currently doing time selling drugs, and her brother’s acquaintance Frank (Anthony Mackie), a petty drug dealer from the hood. Drey has a profound air of loneliness around her, figuratively draped around her neck like a noose, choking out all the desire to express herself in her words. Shareeka Epps nails the way Drey communicates with her eyes, conveying judgement and care, fear and compassion, as her orbit slowly intersects with Dunne’s.

The previously referenced concept of dialectics is central to the themes of the movie. Dialectics is a philosophical approach (presented by great philosophers of the past such as Plato or Hegel) that presents an argument as a dialogue between opposing forces; for example, two individuals possessing diametrically opposite views on the subject matter. Rather than bore his middle school students to death about discourses on the Hegelian philosophy, Dan presents dialectics as a natural phenomenon that permeates not only all of history but the fabric of nature itself. A history of opposing forces got them where they are – in the classroom, Dan teaching, students listening. A few scenes of his students practicing dialectical thinking are sprinkled throughout the movie, leading one of his students to even remark ”Is this for real?”, having just given a verbal report about the infamous Twinkie defence given by one of the murderers of Harvey Milk (the first openly gay politician in the US).

Similarly, the opposing forces are found in our lives, either pulling us deeper into the abyss or lifting us above the preordained fate some of us are living in. For Dan, the opposing forces are his self-destructive drug habit and his budding relationship with Drey, who had witnessed him at his worst, freebasing cocaine in the bathroom filth. Drey finds herself torn between Frank, an old associate of her brother’s, beckoning her to a life of drug dealing and crime, and her budding relationship with Dan, a new role model and a victim of the same sin Frank is asking her to perpetrate against others.

At the core of the movie is the relationship Dan and Drey form between each other, and rather than being presented as some soapy contrivance you would find in a sitcom, their relationship instead is similar to a heart that beats in a rhythm and pace of its own, nestled in the cavity reserved only for itself. Dan knows he is a failure – yet he tries to bring meaningful change to the lives he is entrusted with changing, even if it costs him his job (dialectics isn’t really in a middle school curriculum, is it now?). Drey is the only person privy to Dan’s internal struggle of wishing to steer his students’ futures into lives he cannot afford. Do as I say, not as I do.

Sometimes, I like to browse Reddit or YouTube comments to see if someone has unique insights or opinions about the movie I have just watched. To my surprise, a lot of my fellow viewers considered the movie dark and depressing. In my opinion, this movie is anything but. Fundamentally, this movie is about hope, about the goodness begetting goodness, about human warmth overcoming despair. Dan and Drey give each other something that all good relationships in our lives should give – hope.

A man’s common denominator need not be his vices – ”one thing does not make a man”. A man can be a multitude of opposing forces, locked into a struggle for the better angels of his nature. Yes, some lives are harder than others, and the pull of the void is more powerful for some, yet perhaps the refuge is found in other people’s struggle for their own angels.

Well, I ought to stop at some point as I am seeing that my writing is becoming a soapy contrivance of its own. For the happy people in the room, the movie will most likely turn out to be a drag – the movie is a slice-of-life character study, not too distant in theme from some Russian novels you were forced to read in school/university. For the rest of you feeling the pull of the void, maybe you will find something in this you might like. As for me, I gotta go read a book so I can get out of my head for a bit—peace out.