Half Nelson

"Half Nelson" is that rarest of marvels — an American fiction film that wears its political heart on its sleeve. It’s a small film with a long view, and its story hinges on an unusually nuanced relationship between a white man and a black girl, each of whom has landed in harm’s way. Ryan Gosling plays Dan Dunne, a young idealist suffering from terminal intellectual fatigue caused by disillusionment. A junior high school history teacher, Dan lives with his cat in an apartment filled with books, pages from an unfinished project and furniture that looks dragged in off the street. Dan wants to save one child at a time, like 13-year-old Drey (the newcomer Shareeka Epps), but he’s committing suicide one crack vial at a time. What makes “Half Nelson” both an unusual and an exceptional American film, particularly at a time when even films about Sept. 11 are professed to have no politics, is its insistence on political consciousness as a moral imperative. (new York Times)