Ryan Gosling delivers one of his better performances in a movie so good I can't believe it's from Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, writers and directors of "It's Kind of a Funny Story." I didn't relate to the race stuff here because I don't live in the States, but as a study of addiction it's as honest as middlebrow indie films get.
Gosling's ever escalating cocaine habit doesn't make a monster of him, but instead makes chaos of his emotions. Anyone who's ever drank alcohol or coffee should know that recreational drugs alter not personality but mood yet time and time again the makers of movies on the subject make the same mistake and inadvertently reveal their own delusions and prejudices. It's unfortunate that this in itself qualifies "Half Nelson" as essential viewing. Gosling is written as a good person afflicted by a self destructive streak of which his habit is a consequence (if it wasn't coke it would be something else) and in doing so Fleck/Boden avert the great fallacy of drugs in themselves ruining people's lives, as opposed to people ruining their own lives with drugs.
How did Fleck/Boden go from writing and directing this to more or less reimagining "Girl, Interrupted" with Galifianakis filling Whoopi Goldberg's shoes? They've abandoned humanism in favor of Hollywood convention and in doing so have disqualified themselves from artistic credibility.
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