Camden New Journal - Movies: Half Nelson

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The Review - AT THE MOVIES with WILLIAM HALL
Published: 19 April 2007

Brave look at life out of class

HALF NELSON
Directed by Ryan Fleck
Certificate 15

SET in a run-down Brooklyn high school, the story centres around a cool and committed teacher (Ryan Gosling again, it’s a busy week) who is a rebel with a cause: to impress on his pupils that life shouldn’t be lived by the book.
He veers off the official curriculum to encourage them to explore their own minds, and challenge the bureaucratic syllabus that traps them in conformity.
Like Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society he is charismatic and impassioned in the classroom.
But at the end of the day he goes home alone and spirals down into a stupor of drink and drugs. Inevitably his secret comes out when he is spotted by one of his pupils (Shareeka Epps), a streetwise, lollipop-sucking teenager who could ruin his career. She doesn’t. Instead they form an unlikely friendship, lighting a beacon of hope in the drug-infested neighbourhood.
With intense performances from both leads, this is one for anybody with an appetite for brave and unusual cinema.

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