Movie Review by Matthew Schuchman- Four and a half out of Five ‘Staches. (No real photos from the film are available yet as it still listed as being in post production, so enjoy this Adrien Brody headshot, instead).
Tony Kaye, the director of “Detachment” is best known for making “American History X.” He has done a handful of films since, but nothing seemed to garner much attention. While “Detachment” is still in post production, a lot of the work that has to be done deals more with sound than anything else. They could put the film in theaters the way it is now and have no worries as “Detachment” is nothing less than incredible.
Adrien Brody plays Henry Barthes, a substitute teacher dealing with a dying grandfather, the students and teachers in a failing school and the dilemma of deciding to help a teen prostitute clean up. Henry is the type of teacher that school’s want to stick around, the one they think can be that “movie-like” hero that turns the school upside down. However, Henry wants to stay the substitute. He is a man who doesn’t want to commit to anything, because he knows it will always fall apart, so he needs to keep moving.
I won’t lie, “Detachment” is depressing. More so than any documentary I have seen it plainly and clearly maps out what is truly wrong with the public school system in the United States. It places the blame on all parties; parents, teachers, those looking to make money from the system and those who just don’t care. But the film is not just about the school system, it is about people and how they deal with the world in general. The school system and how parents react to every issue is no different then how you see people deal with the waiter who screwed up an order or the guy who bumped into you because he was busy texting. Or maybe it is similar to how the movie opens; Henry exploding in anger at a nurse who was not doing her job taking care of his grandfather. The fact of the matter is, most everyone in this world feels overwhelmed by something and no one seems to ever do anything to help each other out. In the end, the movie explores something that is not new to anyone. It is about the need to want to be loved and needed, no matter what the situation, in a world where no one seems to care anymore.
“Detachment” is a hard film to talk about without going into so much detail. I frankly just want to write an essay about this film and pick the whole thing apart piece by piece and I probably will, but this is just the review, so let’s move on to other matters.
Adrien Brody is a toss-up actor for me. You are either going to get a knock out performance from him or something mediocre that just does the job. This time around he is #$&@($@ outstanding. This first time script from Carl Lund would make a good movie no matter what, but I feel withBrody the level this film stands on higher level. He is backed-up by an all-star cast of cameos who play the faculty at the school. They include: James Caan, Blythe Danner, Christina Hendricks, Tim Blake Nelson, Marcia Gay Harden, William Peterson, Lucy Liu and an almost unrecognizable Doug E. Doug. The cast list also includes Bryan Cranston, but I’ll be honest, I can’t remember seeing him at all in the film. In two roles that are important to the film there is also good work from young newcomers Betty Kaye as Meredith, Henry’s most attentive student and Sami Gayle who plays the teen prostitute that Henry decides to help.
As stated previously, “Detachment” is not a happy-go-lucky film, but it does leave you with a glimmer of hope. But that hope rests with how the viewer uses what they see to change their own life or help change the system. In a similar fashion to “Children of Men” the film acts like a mirror, showing the viewer the damaged state we are in and challenges us to get up and do something about it.
The minute “Detachment” gets a release date, buy your tickets and see it. It is by far the best movie of 2011 I have seen so far and will probably keep that mantle for a while.
UPDATE: There was another screening of the film last night with a different cut of the film. I was not there but a fellow reviewer was and said the new cut changes the film drastically. When it is officially on its way I will see it again and complete a new review. This review will stay up as my testament to the cut of the film I saw.
You’re the only person I’ve found on the web who’s reviewed this movie.
So, I’m really looking forward to your “essay” revealing more about it.
Solid review, Mr. Moustachio. I agree: this is a great film. Here’s my review.
The truth about high school is that it’s worse than you remember it.
Watching Tony Kaye’s enthralling “Detachment,” you can’t help compare your high school to the one on screen. You remember the terrible teachers you had, the sterile hallways, the asinine classmates, and the absurd assignments. You can remember the “weight that presses on everyone” as Mr. Henry Barthes, played by Adrien Brody, tells his class.
“If you can just hang on, everything will be alright.” Mr. Barthes is that hero teacher that we love tell stories about. He’s the Christ, the Buddha. He’s meant to save us from ourselves.
The problem? Mr. Barthes is a great teacher because he has no life outside of teaching. Like countless other mythologized teachers, Barthes is a detached island to himself, without spouse, children, or personal life. He’s a lonely dude.
As a public school teacher sitting in the audience at the world premiere last night in Tribeca, I have mixed feelings about telling you that Tony Kaye has masterfully succeeded in capturing public school in a macabre and beautiful chalkboard sketch. His lush, mannerist portrait brings a gorgeous but searing light to the lonely reality of the teaching profession. Mr. Kaye’s “Detachment” presents school the way so many of us on the inside see it: a windswept wasteland scourged of its humanity by a culture that burdens its underfunded and unfairly censured teachers with rearing, policing, and institutionalizing our children.
I hate to say it: public school really is this bad. The few great teachers that our system manages to attract are barely hanging on from year to year, knocked senseless by a society that demands way too much from them.
Adrien Brody is riveting as a seemingly serene but deeply damaged substitute teacher. His sloping eyebrows, sometimes treacly or overwrought in other performances, here convey an-inch-from-the-cliff hopelessness without ever becoming a mask. Mr. Brody’s Henry Barthes is sweetly but searingly honest with his students as he sadly skulks the halls of his school. Barthes is also furious enough to throw desks in his classroom and scream at a late night nurse at his grandfather’s assisted care facility. In close-up, documentary-style interviews, Mr. Brody’s eyes flash like lightning one moment and then become as dull as concrete the next, daring us to try to understand how one can care so much and so little. It’s a career performance.
Barthes’ determination to be disconnected keeps him the perennial substitute– in the classroom and in his personal life. Barthes tends to his grandfather but has more than enough time to help out two young girls, a young prostitute and an overweight loner. Despite his earnest efforts, almost none of it works out well. The complicating plot lines, all involving family surrogacy around Barthes, serve the notion that teachers must be dispassionate and alone in order to perform their jobs. The story survives its few yet regrettable school cliches by sticking to this thesis.
Despite the fact that the number of big names threatens to make the movie look like a cameo-fest (Lucy Liu? Christina Hendricks? Marcia Gay Harden? Blythe Danner? James Caan? Really?), the ensemble gels together surprisingly well. After all, weren’t your teachers an impossible cast of characters? The performances are just fine, largely, but two are particularly successful. While Mr. Caan’s grinning jester provides a refreshingly necessary gallows’ humor in some of the film’s darkest moments, it’s Ms. Liu’s imploding truth-teller that lends undeniable heft to the story. As a guidance counselor faced with yet another unreachable know-it-all teen, Ms. Liu’s character finally breaks down, berating the student with a bleak prophecy of the child’s future. “You will NOT be a model! You will forever be on a carousel, competing with 80% of the country for a minimum wage job for the rest of your life!” the guidance counselor screams uselessly at the apathetic teen.
It’s grim stuff, made more grave by the undeniable ring of truth.
The ancient Greeks tell us “we suffer our way to wisdom.” By the end of the film, you’ll hope that is true for most of these characters. Somewhere on screen, between a silent hug and the opening lines to Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher,” you will find a glimmer of hope. But you have to work for it.
School, as the film has drawn it, is a Munch-esque desert of detachment where the best anyone (teachers and students) can do is survive. But the fact that Barthes, and teachers like him, won’t give up– and the fact that Mr. Kaye made this movie– tells us that hope is alive, if not well.
The hope rests almost entirely in our lonely, detached teachers.
Detachment is uplifting and powerful. Detachment leaves you feeling bewildered yet empowered. I saw the movie at Tribeca and was blown away. I can’t detach myself myself from Detachment. Go ssee it at the first chance you get.
I was surprised, gripped and then amazed at “Detachment”. One has to marvel at the Brody and the two young actresses. James Caan is perfectly hilarious. Good stuff.
Hey, for those of you who saw the movie at Tribeca, help me out. The press screenings were all at times I couldn’t make or at the same time as something else I wanted to see, so I skipped it since I already saw the movie.
However, I know there was a different cut shown after the one I saw, so I was wondering what version made its way to Tribeca, to easily establish this, was Brian Cranston in the cut you saw, playing Marsha Gay-Harden’s husband?
Thank you all.
For maybe 20 seconds