In 'Half Nelson,' a student knows a teacher's secret

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. The delicacy of its lead performances (more on them later) and its sense of everyday texture are each worthy of praise. But 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.

The poet W.S. Di Piero once described the work of the Sicilian novelist Leonardo Sciascia as "inquiries into the impossibility of justice and the terminal intellectual fatigue caused by disillusionment." From his haunted eyes, it looks as if Dan Dunne, the young idealist Ryan Gosling plays in Half Nelson, is suffering from that same terminal fatigue. 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. It's the kind of apartment that the poor hold onto until they can't hold on any longer, the kind of dump that cops break into so they can pull out the dead, which makes it the perfect home for a death wish.

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. He's plagued by such contradictions, some inherited, others self-generated, teaching in a part of Brooklyn that still looks like Brooklyn, trying to do good in the very neighborhood where he buys his drugs. (The film was shot, among other areas, in Gowanus.) The people here are mostly black and brown, and in a film not as mindful of race and representation, the whole thing might come off as sanctimonious or worse. This is dangerous ground for Dan, as well as for the film's gifted young director, Ryan Fleck, and his writing (and life) partner, Anna Boden.

But Fleck and Boden are smart cookies, and they have figured out how to short-circuit the expectations of an audience weaned on Hollywood pieties. If Half Nelson had four times the budget and half the brains it could easily be cinematic Valium, a palliative about a white teacher who, through pluck and dedication, inspires his nonwhite students to victory, in the classroom or on a sports field, if not necessarily the larger world. But Half Nelson is something of a beautiful bummer, steeped in such melancholy and painful truths that there are moments when it's almost a surprise that it doesn't come with subtitles. This isn't a pleasure-free zone, but the film earns its glimmers of happiness, and there are glimmers, with honesty.

Much of Half Nelson involves the tentative, messy relationship that develops between Dan and Drey after she discovers him nearly passed out in a school bathroom stall, a crack pipe still in his hand. The discovery gives her power that she doesn't use. Instead of turning him in, this gruff, lonely child makes him a point of curiosity, first spying on him from the school playground and then tightening the circle, coming closer and closer. Soon, Dan is giving her rides home and warning her away from Frank (an excellent Anthony Mackie), the charming midlevel dealer who already has his hooks in her older brother. Dan and Frank each play big brother to Drey, adding layers of self-interested advice to her moral education.