Dan Dunne is a young teacher in an inner-city school who has a novel and relaxed approach to teaching history. Instead of talking facts and dates, Dunne tries to inspire and engage his students. He also smokes crack and does cocaine to try and numb out daily life. One night he gets high in the changing rooms after his team's basketball match and is discovered by student Drey. With this secret between them, Drey is attracted to Dunne as a friend as well as a teacher, since her isolated life sees her lacking friends or role-models. An uneasy and perhaps inappropriate relationship develops between them while independently they face the opportunities to make right and wrong decisions about their own lives.
I wanted to like this film much more than I actually did. Cosmetically it appears to want to be the antithesis of the typical high school/inspirational and edgy teacher stuff and the camera movements and slow development suggest that it will be this realer, darker, more honest. The intelligence behind the idea is also evident as we see Dunne's talk of opposing forces, dialectics, becoming real within his life in regards his interaction with Drey. This works reasonably well but the material is perhaps too remote from the characters, with little in the way of comment on the lives we have laid in front of us and little in the way of debate between the characters on the issues either. This rather spark wordless bond implies depth and there is some there but the film doesn't help itself in regards the words it does play out in the open.
By this I mean Dunne's lessons. I am a liberal and do believe that school should be about more than facts and figures but even I struggled to see what Dunne was achieving in his class. OK, he is a variation on the "different but effective" teacher we see in all this genre but his occasionally semi-coherent babblings and thematic discussions often came across as self-important, self-serving and selfish. I doubt this was the point but that is how it came over to me and it forced me to ask if I really cared about the character. The reaction of the pupils and his ease of access suggests that he is working but the film could have helped this by showing some actual learning going in within this framework/approach. Fleck's direction is good but as a writer with Boden I wanted more in the way of substance, not making it "easier" perhaps but just a touch more accessible.
What covered the material failings for me were the performances. Gosling is impressive in the lead role and he is true to the material even if that does hurt his character. He doesn't always manage to convince within his skin but he is good. My reservation in praising him might surprise some (after all he was Oscar nominated) but to me it is hard to gush about him when he is alongside a wonderfully restrained and yet emotive performance from Epps. Regardless of age, she is engaging with a performance that perfectly contradicts the outward surliness with the vulnerability etc under the surface. It is hard to dislike her in this and for me she was the hook that kept me interested. Mackie is solid in his role, avoiding easy cliché that could have been his whole role. The whole show is the lead two but smaller turns are good from others as well.
Overall then, this is not all that I had hoped it would be. At times it appears intelligent and offering edgy potential but it is difficult to get into and the lack of debate on the characters and their lives does rather make the film hard to get into and leaves it less accessible than I wanted. The performances do a lot to cover the weaknesses and Epps is excellent in particular but don't come to this mistaking it for a mainstream film, because it is not.
I wanted to like this film much more than I actually did. Cosmetically it appears to want to be the antithesis of the typical high school/inspirational and edgy teacher stuff and the camera movements and slow development suggest that it will be this realer, darker, more honest. The intelligence behind the idea is also evident as we see Dunne's talk of opposing forces, dialectics, becoming real within his life in regards his interaction with Drey. This works reasonably well but the material is perhaps too remote from the characters, with little in the way of comment on the lives we have laid in front of us and little in the way of debate between the characters on the issues either. This rather spark wordless bond implies depth and there is some there but the film doesn't help itself in regards the words it does play out in the open.
By this I mean Dunne's lessons. I am a liberal and do believe that school should be about more than facts and figures but even I struggled to see what Dunne was achieving in his class. OK, he is a variation on the "different but effective" teacher we see in all this genre but his occasionally semi-coherent babblings and thematic discussions often came across as self-important, self-serving and selfish. I doubt this was the point but that is how it came over to me and it forced me to ask if I really cared about the character. The reaction of the pupils and his ease of access suggests that he is working but the film could have helped this by showing some actual learning going in within this framework/approach. Fleck's direction is good but as a writer with Boden I wanted more in the way of substance, not making it "easier" perhaps but just a touch more accessible.
What covered the material failings for me were the performances. Gosling is impressive in the lead role and he is true to the material even if that does hurt his character. He doesn't always manage to convince within his skin but he is good. My reservation in praising him might surprise some (after all he was Oscar nominated) but to me it is hard to gush about him when he is alongside a wonderfully restrained and yet emotive performance from Epps. Regardless of age, she is engaging with a performance that perfectly contradicts the outward surliness with the vulnerability etc under the surface. It is hard to dislike her in this and for me she was the hook that kept me interested. Mackie is solid in his role, avoiding easy cliché that could have been his whole role. The whole show is the lead two but smaller turns are good from others as well.
Overall then, this is not all that I had hoped it would be. At times it appears intelligent and offering edgy potential but it is difficult to get into and the lack of debate on the characters and their lives does rather make the film hard to get into and leaves it less accessible than I wanted. The performances do a lot to cover the weaknesses and Epps is excellent in particular but don't come to this mistaking it for a mainstream film, because it is not.