Ryan Fleck is good at letting us like people whose judgement we have reason to doubt. His partnership with Anna Boden gives actors room to make those people complicated; Half Nelson is our clearest reason to recommend him.
Fi1m perspective
In Half Nelson (2006), Ryan Gosling’s Dan Dunne is a teacher we can like while doubting his judgement. Fleck lets him be easy company, which makes his friendship with a pupil, played by Shareeka Epps, more troubling. A less careful film would have the child repair the adult and call that progress. Fleck keeps the wish to help alive while making us question how much help either can give. We were moved by Gosling’s restraint: he leaves Dan’s difficulties visible without continually asking for our pity.
That attention to people has been developed in close partnership with Anna Boden, who co-wrote Half Nelson and collaborates with Fleck across writing, directing and editing. The independent films that followed included Sugar (2008), about immigration and baseball, and the road-gambling drama Mississippi Grind (2015). Captain Marvel (2019) marked the move into major studio filmmaking. Freaky Tales (2025), an anthology drawing on his Oakland upbringing and 1980s culture, takes another turn.
Half Nelson also shows where that approach can falter. Fleck and Boden interrupt the teacher and pupil’s story with passages of history, but do too little to make those passages matter to the friendship. We understand the wish to look beyond two individuals; the interruption still weakens our involvement with them. The occasional lull is easier to forgive because Gosling and Epps remain persuasive when the writing grows thin. Their performances give us a reason to stay through passages the script has not made interesting enough.
The baseball in Sugar and the gambling in Mississippi Grind fit his recurring interest in people struggling within a particular social setting. We would rather see those pressures emerge through a character’s choices than have them explained in an interlude. In Half Nelson, he questions the expected progress of a teacher-and-pupil drama without making the wish to help seem foolish. Whatever the setting, that is the care we want him to keep. Start with Half Nelson for Gosling and Epps, and leave some time afterwards to disagree about Dan.
Biography
Ryan Fleck is an American film director, writer and producer. Born in Berkeley, California, he studied film at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
Fleck is known for his long-term collaboration with filmmaker Anna Boden. Together they wrote and directed the independent drama Half Nelson (2006), which starred Ryan Gosling and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Their subsequent features include Sugar (2008), It's Kind of a Funny Story (2010), Mississippi Grind (2015) and the Marvel film Captain Marvel (2019).
