Movie Review: Detachment

Director: Tony Kaye

Starring: Adrien Brody, Marcia Gay Harden, Christina Hendricks, and James Caan

Plot: A substitute teacher is assigned to a new school. This school is full of rude students and cynical teachers.

Review:

Adrien Brody plays Henry Bathes (the s is silent). He is a substitute teacher who travels from school to school filling in for long term absences. He is capable of teaching and reaching students, but he recognizes his role as a babysitter. This doesn’t stop him from trying to make the connection. When he isn’t substitute teaching, he is visiting his grandfather in an assisted living home. He is suffering from old age losing big parts of his memory. On the way back from one of these visits, Henry meets an underage prostitute and feels compelled to help her get back on her feet.

His newest assignment is a high school that is in shambles. At times, they make it out to be that this school is an example of the entire American education system. The students don’t give two shits about their future or how their education will help them, while the teachers have been driven so far into the mud by the students’ poor attitudes that they become detached from their jobs. Wink wink, that’s the title of the film. This detachment boils over to the personal lives of the teachers. Henry for instance seems to have no social life whatsoever and the bare minimum of personal belongings a regularly socialized person would own. The principal is in an unhappy relationship dealing with a over-sexed husband who doesn’t make an effort to appreciate her in any other capacity. Tim Blake Nelson’s sleepwalking teacher comes home to a house full of zombies glued to the tv or computer. James Caan supplements his feelings with medication; Lucy Lui is driven to emotional outbursts and self-loathing.

It is hard to imagine that this school exists (although I’m sure there is a place like it out there some place), let alone the example of how the education system has failed us. All of the actors are so melodramatic and full of worst case scenarios. The film starts off with this really great tone and pace. It appreciates the quieter moments, but it doesn’t commit to that. Eventually, it becomes overwritten and long-winded. No one can just react like a normal person. Everything becomes a life and death situation. For instance, one student loses their composure while talking about her feelings about Henry and goes in for a hug. While Henry turns down her advances and pushes her away, a passing teacher can’t help but think pedophile. It is part of the instutionalized cynicism that we are all susceptible to. The only thing this flurry of emotion is good for is making it a slightly more personal and passionate look at the failure of the education system that The Wire had in its fourth season.

In the end, Detachment comes off a little too pretentious. While it is occasionally well acted and written, it is inconsistent. It suffers from the same cynicism it demonizes treating everything with doom and gloom.

Rating: 6/10