DVD Reviews: American Hardcore (2006) and Half Nelson (2006)

American Hardcore (2006)

Watching American Hardcore, a documentary directed by Paul Rachman about the underground American punk scene from 1981-1986, is like being bludgeoned over the head with a baseball bat repeatedly for an hour and a half. Like the musical scene itself, the blaring riffs and frantic concert footage assault your ears and eyes without mercy, but the point is lost amid the violence.

The documentary is successful in as many ways as it is ineffective. It tries to include every band that made a ripple in the underground punk scene in an obsessive-compulsive quest to not leave anyone out. It shows how bands in each major city in the country took what they heard coming out of Los Angeles and made it their own by tweaking a sound, adding their individual angst, and together, making up a unique grassroots musical phenomenon.

However, because of this quest to be the definitive, all-inclusive history of the scene, it gets lost amid the concert flyers, band pins and patches. After hearing numerous stories of fighting with the cops and how each band slept on countless linoleum floors like selfless Buddhist monks on a holy pilgrimage, the tales begin to lose their meaning. Why were kids doing this? What was the purpose? Why did they hate their parents, the cops and most forms of authority? Every talking head tells you these traits were indicative of the scene, but like being a victim of an assault, the fillm leaves you curious why it ever happened in the first place.

Half Nelson (2006)

Ryan Gosling’s performance in Half Nelson as Dan Dunne, a Brooklyn school teacher stuck in the strangle hold of addiction, is one of the most powerful performances of the year.

After he is discovered smoking crack in the girl’s locker room by his student, Drey, Dan fights to keep the two sides of his life from interfering with one another. Drey, played by Shareeka Epps, is a lonely kid whose family life consists of a brother in prison, a long-gone father, a mother who works double-shifts, and a drug dealer "uncle". Up against considerable odds, Drey is looking for a role model and befriends her troubled teacher. Together, both Dan and Drey give one another the strength to confront their considerable troubles.

Gosling is an actor known for choosing challenging roles with conflicting sides to their personalities, and, as in his previous role in the film The Believer, about a Jewish neo-Nazi, here he finds similar success depicting a character stranded between two antagonistic forces. However, this time, Gosling gives a much more subtle performance. The anguish Dan feels by being unable to save Drey from her environment and his inability to shake his own addiction is evident not by a grandiose gnashing of teeth. Instead Dan’s face becomes slack, his limp expression masking the feud raging beneath the surface. The only portals into his emotions are his eyes, which are dark pools of longing for a better, more sober, existence. It’s these small details that make his character believable and the quiet torment roiling within that makes his portrayal heartbreaking.

Epps (who also played Drey in director Ryan Fleck’s short-film version of this story, 2004's Gowanus, Brooklyn) has a kind of presence and knowingness that far more experienced actors struggle vainly to find. However, it is Gosling’s portrayal of a teacher's mental and physical struggle that anchors the picture.

Half Nelson manages to evade the easy templates of the “Dedicated Teacher, Troubled School” genre, however, it is not perfect: a third-act scene with Dan going home to visit his mom and dad who are wine-swilling ex-hippies with long ago abandoned utopian dreams and a comfortable middleclass existence sketches his self-medicating pathology in simplistic brush strokes. And the improbable ways in which Drey’s uncle arranges for Drey to deliver drugs to Dan in some ugly motel in the outskirts of the borough stretches the films credibility.

The film also deals with larger issues then the two characters at its center. Dan’s dialectic philosophy, a concept that everything is made of opposing forces, gives the filmmakers room to discuss political topics like the prison riots at Attica or the assassination of Harvey Milk and allows Gosling’s character to contemplate if one person’s efforts can truly make a difference in other people’s lives. The philosophy is the films central concept. What’s the point of teaching, let alone existing, if one person cannot make a difference in another? And if making a difference is impossible, why not just buy drugs and check out?