Detachment

Logline: a substitute teacher who drifts from classroom to classroom finds a connection to the students and teachers during his latest assignment.

Cast: Adrien Brody, Christina Hendricks, Lucy Liu, Betty Kaye, James Caan

Directed by: Tony Kaye

So, I didn't do a Friday review simply because Total Recall came out and I really didn't want to go to the theatres to see it. The weather was nice and I decided to take the day off rather than quickly put up a review of something older. That being said, this will probably show up as originally posted on a Tuesday, and that is correct to some extent, but in the west coast I still have time to make my Monday deadline. :)

If you didn't tune in last Thursday, I reviewed a not so old throwback called The Troll Hunter which, like Detachment, debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2010. Why so long for Detachment to get released? Probably because it wasn't very marketable to begin with. It has since earned a high IMDb rating of 7.7 and has generated a bit of buzz upon its release. Ratings on RT have dropped significantly since this weekend, though.

Summary

In a nutshell, this film is about Henry Barton, a substitute school teacher that could be full time, but chooses not to be. It is also a study of school systems and the philosophies involved in teaching/raising students. In particular, this school happens to be in ghetto America; full of delinquent teenagers.

I'll keep my summary short. It's basically all I can give you. 

Review/Topic of the Day

This movie wasn't made for me.

It raises a ton of points, has a lot of realistic occurrences, and makes you think about certain issues. But it doesn't really stick. I can barely remember most of the issues other than the obvious one which is made very clear in the film's final scene. Why? Because this is material that most people have already thought of and the story itself is unstructured. Yes, Indie movies are supposed to have their own flare. Yes, they're allowed to be different. Yes, I enjoy when writers/directors come up with something unique. BUT, you can't just re-write the basic fundamentals of film making and expect audiences to get you. You have to help them connect to the story, make them feel for every character that's hurting, give them backstory, give them something to cry about when something terrible happens, give them something that they can remember.

Detachment is filmed and written in a way that annoyed me. They'd show scenes from school, then they'd have Barton mumbling about philosophy of raising kids, then they'd cut to a scene with him and hooker, then school, then philosophy, then his dying grandfather who constantly confuses him with his mother that killed herself due to his Alzheimer's disease, then he lets the hooker live in his house, then a student falls for him. Never ever ever does the story stop to take a breath. It constantly pumps characters at you, then throws a montage at you, then throws Barton's backstory at you, which is shown through oddly directed flashbacks that unravel something easily predicted, then scenes that deal with issues other than school issues. It's just one big mess.

This is the same director that did American History X and a documentary on abortion. He likes to take issues by the horns and raise points. I loved AHX, I've watched it numerous times. But, the reason I was so connected to that movie is because the main character's flaws were so real and in your face. The character of Barton does what the movie title says: he detaches himself from society because he doesn't want commitment/the pain that comes with it. He even says at one point that he's "not really there". Talk about a floating character. I felt bad for him, but that doesn't mean I have to be interested in him. In order for me to be connected, I have to be interested. The movie failed from the point I decided that Mr. Barton was boring.

I do have to say though, Adrien Brody continues to impress me and has kept his spot on my underrated actors list for a long time now. This is a guy who won an Oscar and starred in Peter Jackson's King Kong, yet he still continues to do Indies and movies that inspire him. I hope he stops doing Gillette commercials and gets back into doing feature films more often.

Consensus

Detachment is one of those movies that not many people will hear about simply due to the fact that its story and characters are not marketable to a mass audience. The film's ultimate goal is to raise awareness towards the failure of school systems and their curriculum. Although powerfully acted by Adrien Brody, this ultimate goal is derailed by an uninteresting main character, a lack of solutions to the problems presented, and a cluttered story that, fittingly, left me feeling detached from the film's vision. 

5/10