Q&E Post-Oscar Special

Every year, I sit down to watch the Oscars, and every year I come to my senses four hours later swearing not to do it again. Do they really need separate awards for sound editing and sound design? Couldn't they relegate one of those to the minor league awards that Maggie Gyllenhaal gave out last last week, and promote something cooler, like best CGI? Sort of like the English Premiere League does? Also, the best movie of 2006, Children of Men, wasn't even nominated.

But hopefully seeing Ryan Gosling lose for Best Actor will cause a few more people to Netflix Half Nelson, a very, very good movie about a troubled middle school teacher and one of his students that grossed about $79.95 at the domestic box office last year. In addition to being worthy in its own right, Half Nelson also raises an interesting question: why are movies about schools and education so generally terrible?

To be clear, many worthwhile movies have been partially or mostly set in schools, but they're nearly always comedies and satires--Heathers, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Election--and none of them are really about schools and education. As a rule, the more the focus turns to education, the worse the movie--see for example Dangerous Minds, Take the Lead, the worst moments of Dead Poets Society, etc. etc.

Those movies all fail in the same way. The filmakers take a real, important thing--the lasting inspiration that great teachers can create with their students--and over-dramatize it to the point of deadening cliche. By not focusing on this, Half Nelson actually makes education much more real and thus compelling.