Viraj's Weblog

I remember seing a movie called Fresh which was about a precocious young kid growing up in the inner-city. He excels at one game: chess, whom his dead-beat father (played by Samuel L. Jackson) has taught him. This is a movie that takes a completely different look at inner-city struggle. It's about a struggle to get out of that environment, and not fall trap to the plagues that affect the majority of the community (drugs, violence, etc). The boy plays everyone as if they were chess pieces, and the strategy is only revealed towards the end of the movie. But the strategy is a success and he frees himself from the shackles that held him down in that environment. I thought it was beautiful.

Half Nelson reminded me of that movie. It's about an inner-city teacher who is good at his work but has a crack addiction which one of the students that admires him finds out. It was very moving and sometimes very heart-breaking to watch. It really made me think about how tough it must be for inner-city children to find good role-models and avoid the pitfalls that plague those communities. It really is a struggle to get out of such an environment and it takes alot of strength to do so. I think this is what the movie was really trying to convey. It ended optimistically but in no way was it a Hollywood type of ending. I liked that because it was realistic.

The teacher is played by Ryan Gosling, whom I really liked in the movie The Believer. In that movie he played a neo-Nazi, and a journalist uncovered he was actually Jewish. In the end he realized he was wrong and was filled with guilt. Supposedly it is based on a true story, but I thought he acted really good in that movie and this one.