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Half Nelson

Country: USA, Language: English, 106 mins

  • Director: Ryan Fleck
  • Writer: Ryan Fleck; Anna Boden
  • Producer: Anna Boden; Charlie Corwin

CGiii Comment

Dan Dunne is an eighth-grade history teacher in an inner-city school deep in the heart of Brooklyn. He eschews the provided curriculum in favor of off-the-cuff, but deeply heartfelt lectures about the importance of understanding history, rather than just memorizing it. He speaks primarily of dialectics, the tensions between two opposing forces. He is torn between his desire to change the world and his increasingly desperate realization that he can't, at least not in the grand, awe-inspiring ways that he envisioned as an eager, idealistic college student. He started using drugs as a way to escape the pain of life, and it has turned into a crutch that bears increasingly heavy loads of psychological weight. In his classroom, which is populated almost entirely by black and Hispanic students, Dan lectures about how the world is structured into opposing forces, illustrating it at one point by arm-wrestling one of his students.

His unorthodox approach inspires them during class, but interestingly enough we don't see its effects outside the classroom. The film focuses on Dan and his relationship with Drey, a 13-year-old student of his who catches him in the bathroom smoking crack after school one day. Drey understands Dan's frustrations with life; she is the child of an overworked single mother whom she barely sees, and spending so much time on her own has made her self-reliant, but also hard on the edges.


Trailer...

Cast & Characters

Ryan Gosling as Dan Dunne;
Jeff Lima as Roodly;
Shareeka Epps as Drey;
Nathan Corbett as Terrance;
Tyra Kwao-Vovo as Stacy;
Rosemary Ledee as Gina;
Tristan Mack Wilds as Jamal;
Bryce Silver as Bernard;
Kaela C. Pabon as Lena;
Erica Rivera as Erika;
Stephanie Bast as Vanessa;
Eleanor Hutchins as Simone;
Sebastian Sozzi as Javier;
Tina Holmes as Rachel;
Karen Chilton as Karen