SummaryHenry Barthes is a substitute teacher who conveniently avoids any emotional connections by never staying anywhere long enough to form a bond with either his students or colleagues. A lost soul grappling with a troubled past, Henry finds himself at a public school where an apathetic student body has created a frustrated, burned-out admin...
SummaryHenry Barthes is a substitute teacher who conveniently avoids any emotional connections by never staying anywhere long enough to form a bond with either his students or colleagues. A lost soul grappling with a troubled past, Henry finds himself at a public school where an apathetic student body has created a frustrated, burned-out admin...
It is the greatest biblio-climax of any film since "Fahrenheit 451," although Truffaut's prayer was that reading might yet survive calamity and carry the torch of the civilized. Detachment snufffs out that faith; books it warns us, are the first thing to go. [19 March 2012, p.91]
When it stays in the classroom, Detachment is a scrappy testament - to the futility of even trying to reach students who are cut off from the possibilities of knowledge, and to the way that our teachers are slowly being driven nuts.
Detachment is not a movie or drama that you watch only! "each movie is a life", but do you use this sentence for all the movies which are on screen? absolutely no! Detachment is a lost part of our life. all the characters in this movie make a man, a human! This is movie about morality or high morality! It's Tony Kaye's never land. It is our surreal world among this bloody real world. Sometimes, I'm Henry, who is building his personality again. Sometimes, I'm Meredith, who is mixed up and need someone to be a permanent solution for her. somebody, after watching, maybe say that this is not a film. it is an exaggeration! This existentialist world does not belong to this world, especially American world. Well, I said this is Tony Kaye talkie. This is a dream world in his mind who thinks a better world among this corrupted real world. Who said that you must think all the characters are real and they are beside us? No, They our other moral parts!
Detachment is not a lesson from a director. No, It just wants to show that you will be this if you want to be this.
Adrien Brody was fantastic as the frazzled teacher trying to live despite the world seemingly going mad around him. Sami Gayle was also impressive as Erica.
Despite the rather depressing subject matter, the quality acting made it so believable and Henry so endearing that I have fallen in love with this film.
Brilliant!
People will either love Detachment or hate it, and either way it provides powerful testimony to the unrivaled passion and undiminished craft of director Kaye, whose notoriety in the film industry is matched by his near-total invisibility to the general public.
Comes across like the creation of a precocious student. I don't mean that to be a damning critique, though Detachment is a mesmerizing misfire -- it's just that it has the uncomplicated earnestness and hyperbolic melodrama of teenage poetry.
Scripter Lund, himself an ex-teacher, delivers a story that lacks nuance, and mixes badly with Kaye's impatient edits, Dutch angles and extreme close-ups.
Superb movie with great messages for the US education system (and the worldwide one, too) !! A must for parents, students and professional teachers. Also, proof that small budget films are usually much much better than their blockbusters cousins.
In connection with Detachment, the French film Entre les murs is repeatedly mentioned, which is also a disillusioning probe into the depths of current school conditions. The difference, of course, is that Cantet's film brilliantly uses the style of cinema verité, and therefore gives the impression of an unmediated "window into reality" - but it is, understandably, a careful construct, attempting to cover all problematic aspects of the school system in the form of a case study of one class and then one pupil . Detachment is mainly the opposite from a formal point of view - a syncretic work that flaunts its artificiality and stylization. Here we encounter completely unequivocal documentary elements (repeated cuts to an "interview" with Barthes/Brody, grainy shots from a hand-held camera, seemingly intuitive reframing of the camera, etc.), but also artistic narrative procedures (highly stylized subjective flashbacks, alternating formats, animated nipples, etc.), which are two seemingly incompatible areas of the filmmaking spectrum. Detachment can best be characterized as a frustrated cry with an attempt to appeal to the viewer through emotions - these are created here by a quick succession of heated situations that could never happen in such a short period of time in one place (one school) in reality, but here they are for us shoved under their noses in their most strained form. In addition, the film makes extensive use of fast-cut (in one scene, cleverly confusing) close-ups, which increase the impact of the unfolding situation or dialogue even more. It is, in a way, a frontal attack on the viewer's senses, which, however, finds justification in the hopelessness it discusses. The picture is a reflection of the chaos of one, or perhaps a collective mind, which does not know how to fix the system, but at the same time unfortunately knows that the system is completely **** up and dysfunctional. Here, it goes beyond the boundaries of educational institutions and, for example, in line with Henry's sick grandfather, the film also goes into the healthcare sector. "Surprisingly" it reveals a number of similarities: both environments are characterized by bureaucratic depersonalization consisting of paperwork hovering over the newly deceased, or in commercially oriented marketing presentations viewing education as a corporation tasked with fulfilling financial and other plans and generating profit. A lot of documentaries today play with elements of fiction and thus become a kind of hybrid that admits its manipulativeness or stylization - Detachment is a postmodern scattered fiction with elements of a documentary and a clearly appellative tone, which finds a certain ideological similarity with the agitation films of Michael Moore. And cinematography thus further sinks into an even more fragmented space, in which the differences between art and kitsch, pop culture and avant-garde, documentary and fiction, almost cease to exist.
This is a sobering watch indeed, a thoughtful one with a strong emphasis on social commentary (the desire to make something of yourself, to believe in your ability etc.). Its perhaps a little like Dangerous Minds, only not so dramatic as such. Having been in education for many years, seeing how disinterested the numerous students were reminded me of situations I've seen myself. I liked that at times we (the viewer) are shown what appear to be drawings made out of chalk shown on old fashioned blackboards, drawings/images of birds taking flight, animals and so on. I suppose its to represent freedom and mobility (social mobility) perhaps.
I thought that Adrien Brody did well portraying the substitute teacher, someone who can guess what may be behind some of his temporary pupils problems and issues but never having the time to be able to fully work with any of them, while we also see that he has his own emotional stresses in his own family life.
This is a sad watch but its a good film. I liked the variety of characters present and I thought the film was well casted too, so overall I would recommend this film, yes.
Possibly one of the most underrated movies in 2012. "Detachment" gave an honest though a little too pessimistic at times insight into the complexity of how people cope with life's own complexity. With great performances from the cast, especially Oscar winner Adrien Brody and newcomer Sami Gayle and creative,story telling, "Detachment" is something really different and worth watching from the mixture of shallow scripted movies we are bombarded with in recent times.