teacher, teacher.

We have always looked up to our teachers (especially when we were kids or even in high school), especially with the law of nature bestowed upon them to become second parents, as the school is our second home. No matter how we sometimes hate them for their authoritative feel, we have always looked up to them as effigies of moral ascendancy, wisdom and true dedication to their craft. (I remember the worst thing I did with one of my high school teachers was to make a devil sign at her back in front of the class who were laughing by now. I hated her that time as much as I hated her subject -- senior Math. But I did feel sorry after that incident.)

But human as the doctors of SGH are, they don't suffer from infallibility. They do make wrong choices and sometimes they learn from us too, their students.

The learning dynamics and the reversal-of-role theme is tackled in a minimalist and impressionistic fashion in the debut film by Ryan Fleck interestingly entitled Half Nelson. (Imagine my excitement when I finally got hold of the pirated copy of the DVD for which I was incessantly looking since last December.) A revealing Ryan Gosling plays Danny Dunne, an unconventionally inspiring history teacher in a suburban elementary school populated mostly by Afro-Americans and Hispanics. Instead of forcing historical dates, persons, events and places into their young minds, he impressed upon his students that history is above all a process of changes, of opposing forces.
Such is the logic of the film's title. Half-nelson is a popular wrestling move which obviously depicts these opposing forces. History is a product of two opposing forces according to this teacher, and it is only by understanding these forces that you understand history. His lectures are filled with these descriptions thus enticing his young students to participate. But not to be mislead, the movie is not a full-length history lecture on the Civil War or the emancipation of black slavery. Such opposing factors, more importantly, come into play in Dan's character, once an activist, who enlivens his misplaced idealism by trying to save a female student of his from the dark life of drug dealing. His altruistic motive becomes a moral critique especially that he is a crackpot himself -- sniffing doses of heroin every night and in school restrooms. His being caught by his student (Shareeka Epps) will start the authentic teacher-student relationship and its eventual reversal during the film's denouement.

In Notes on a Scandal, art teacher Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett) faces the collapse of her own family and imprisonment after being sexually involved with her fifteen-year old student. The wrong choices are made apparent and the script is not lacking of its justifications based on Hart's characterization. What is interesting though is the uncontrollable force in the person of her co-teacher Barbara Covett (Judi Dench), who is bent on making a homosexual relationship out of their platonic friendship. Sheba tells this secret to Barbara but vowed to end the relationship with the boy.

After an almost-humorous incident that hurt her feelings and finding out that Sheba kept seeing his student, she innocently made possible the rumor crept the grapevine and ballooned into media-frenzy. Sheba also uncovered the diary in which Barbara painstakingly immortalizes her sexually-morbid thoughts. The scene explodes with rage only Blanchett and Dench could have delivered. The conflict resolution is predictable but may not always seem vindictive. The screenplay, adapted from Zoe Heller's book, is brilliant with the weight of British prose specifically the lines delivered with cunning bitchiness of Dench.