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Detachment: Tribeca Review
5:39 PM - 4/26/2011 by Frank Scheck
The Bottom Line
Harrowing depiction of the American educational system features a superb
performance by Adrien Brody.
Director/director of photography:
Tony Kaye
Screenwriter:
Carl Lund
Cast:
Adrien Brody, Marcia Gay Harden, James Caan, Christina Hendricks
Director Tony Kaye's depiction of a substitute teacher's hellish experience
in a public high school makes his "American History X" seem lighthearted
by comparison.
NEW YORK — Movies have been depicting the horrors of the American
educational system for more than half a century, from The Blackboard
Jungle to Dangerous Minds and others too numerous to mention. But none
has reached quite the nightmarish depths of Detachment, the latest effort
from cinematic provocateur Tony Kaye. This film depicting the hellish
experiences of a high school substitute teacher makes such previous
works by the filmmaker as American History X seem positively
lighthearted by comparison. Commercial prospects look dicey, but there’s
sure to be kudos for the film, which recently received its world premiere at
the Tribeca Film Festival.
Adrien Brody, delivering his finest performance since The Pianist, plays
the central role of the disaffected Henry Barthes.
Henry’s latest gig is at an inner-city public school that is clearly falling
apart. Its principal (Marcia Gay Harden) is about to be forced out due to
abysmal test scores, the teachers and other staff members all seem to be
floundering, and the vast majority of students display zero interest in
learning.
But the kids do respond positively to Henry’s stoic demeanor, his refusal
to back down in the face of their taunts and his uncommon degree of
empathy. Among those who blossom under his tutelage is Meredith (Betty
Kaye, the director’s daughter), an emotionally fragile young woman who
displays a genuine talent for photography.
While attempting to handle his demanding work duties, Henry must also
contend with a grandfather (Louis Zorich) suffering from dementia and —
representing the film’s most clichéd element — a teenage prostitute (Sami
Gayle) who he takes under his wing.
As usual, the director injects intense visual stylization into the proceedings
to frequently arresting effect. The film begins with stark, black- and-white
filmed interviews with presumably real teachers describing their
experiences and also includes brief animated snippets commenting on the
action and a series of sepia-toned flashbacks depicting a traumatic event
from Henry’s childhood.
Carl Lund’s screenplay is most effective in its depictions of the charged
interactions between the students and teachers, which could have been
written by Paddy Chayefsky in his prime. Among the powerful performers
in the terrific ensemble are James Caan as a wisecracking older teacher
who’s seen it all, Christina Hendricks as a colleague who takes a shine to
Henry, Lucy Liu as a guidance counselor reduced to verbally abusing her
charges, and Tim Blake Nelson as a teacher on the verge of cracking.
The younger performers make equally strong impressions, and Brody
delivers an award-caliber turn that is all the more effective for the quiet
restraint he exhibits for most of the film’s running time.
It could certainly be argued that Detachment is ultimately more
sensationalistic than it is enlightening. But there’s no denying that it’s the
work of a powerhouse filmmaker trying to shake audiences up. Here he
succeeds handily.
Venue: Tribeca Film Festival
Production Companies: Paper Street Films, Kingsgate Films, Appian Way
Cast: Adrien Brody, Marcia Gay Harden, James Caan, Christina Hendricks,
Lucy Liu, Blythe Danner, Tim Blake Nelson, William Petersen, Bryan
Cranston, Sami Gayle, Betty Kaye
Director/director of photography: Tony Kaye
Screenwriter: Carl Lund
Producers: Austin Stark, Benji Kohn, Bingo Gubelmann, Carl Lund, Chris
Papavasilio, Greg Shapiro
Executive producers: Adrien Brody, Peter Sterling, Andre Laport
Editors: Barry Alexander Brown, Geoffrey Richman
Production designer: Jade Healy
Costume designer: Wendy Schecter
Music: The Newton Brothers
No rating, 100 minutes
Detachment
27 April, 2011 | By Howard Feinstein
Dir: Tony Kaye. US. 2011. 100mins
Detachment is the colourful, fluid story about a substitute teacher, Henry
(Adrien Brody), his colleagues, and the teen prostitute, Erica (Sami
Gayle), he salvages from the gutter, in which, as odd as it may seem,
monologues about progressive social issues serve the narrative well.
Dotted with rapid flashbacks and impressive chalk animation, the film is
as vivid as a Bollywood musical, but way livelier, visually more abstract,
and kitschless, with the Newton Brothers’ glorious soundtrack rising and
falling appropriately.
The film - which had its world premiere at Tribeca - will be critic-driven for
certain, but once word spreads about its accessibility in spite of its unique
artfulness and intelligent subject matter and dialogue, an educated and
worldly public will wonder what the fuss is about and venture into upscale
arthouses everywhere. That the students are cool and belligerent and the
music geared toward the young crowd could attract a youthful audience as
well.
The film begins with unsmiling, documentary-like talking heads following a
simultaneously self-loathing and misanthropic quote from Camus at his
most existential (“I have never felt so detached from myself and the
world”). It ends with a line from Poe’s melancholic The Fall of the House of
Usher (“There was a sinking, a sinking of the heart”), as striking shots of
trashed contemporary public schools in the US point to the nadir of the
American educational system.
In the low-income school where Henry is currently teaching, he is
confronted by unruly students he tactfully tames in order to educate. The
principal, Carol (Marcia Gay Harden), is considered dead weight by
bureaucrats who consider the property only in terms of its financial impact
on the neighbourhood (“We are consensus building”) and has just been let
go.
The staff responds to ever-worsening circumstances in one of two ways.
Some become hysterical, like Sarah (Christina Hendricks), a teacher who
spreads vicious rumours, and Dr. Parker (Lucy Liu), the school
psychologist who has a temper tantrum; others, like Charles (a funny
James Caan in a best-ever performance), use humour as their defence
shield.
Henry is the hub of the movie in every way. He milks his own relatively
calm façade to defuse student anger. He is certainly qualified for Mensa
and speaks an intellectual English, but he never condescends.
His problem is that he sees the world in black and white: His demons are
buried deep inside, and they are exposed only in rapid-fire flashbacks (his
alcoholic mother committed suicide, his half-demented grandfather had
sexually abused him). When he sees Erica perform oral sex for money on
a city bus, the groundwork is laid for his life to serve a purpose: her
transformation. He is good at it.
Lost in the shuffle is the talented Betty Kaye – director Tony Kaye’s
daughter - as Meredith, an overweight student in Henry’s class who wants
his blessing as an artist and his body as a woman. In her case, he is
detached to the extreme, and she makes an ugly exit that is not a snug fit
for the general tone of the movie. But Betty Kaye has the talent to build a
successful career. She just needs to find a project that employs no kin.
Production companies: Paper Street Films, Kingsgate Films
Producers: Austin Stark, Benji Kohn, Chris Papavasiliou, Bingo
Gubelmann, Greg Shapiro, Carl Lund
Executive producers: Adrien Brody, Peter Sterling, Andre Laport
Screenplay: Carl Lund
Cinematography: Tony Kaye
Production designer: Jade Healy
Editor: Peter Goddard
Music: The Newton Brothers (Andy Grush, Taylor Stewart)
Main cast: Adrien Brody, Marcia Gay Harden, James Caan, Christina
Hendricks, Lucy Liu, Blythe Danner, Tim Blake Nelson, William Petersen,
Bryan Cranston, Sami Gayle, Betty Kaye
DETACHMENT
By Daniel Hubschman
Hollywood has had lots to say about the American school system as of
late, and whether you choose to believe the information presented to you
via eye-opening documentaries like Waiting For Superman or fictional
phenomenon’s like Fox’s Glee, it’s clear that our educational institutions
are out-of whack at best, broken at worst. No one has been able to depict
this disheartening downward spiral quite like director Tony Kaye with his
new film Detachment. In it, the reclusive auteur focuses on just a few
weeks in the life of Henry Barthes, a substitute teacher who gets more
than he bargained for when he takes a job at a fledgling high school, and
in the process gives parents, professors and kids a much-needed wake-up
call.
In this short period of time, Kaye dissects the contemporary classroom
with unflinching realism. The grainy, worn film stock he uses for his verite’
photography, coupled with topical subject matter ranging from child
prostitution and teen suicide to parental negligence, makes the movie
appear to be more a documentary than a narrative feature, but that’s
where Carl Lund’s poetic screenplay comes in. His prose is simultaneously
beautiful and brutal, effortlessly supplying existential excerpts for star
Adrien Brody, darkly comic bits for fellow teacher James Caan and up-tothe-minute slanguage for the teenage students. He also uses this starstudded stage (the ensemble includes Marcia Gay Harden, Tim Blake
Nelson and Christina Hendricks among many others) to touch upon the
larger sociopolitical issues effecting our schools and children, lashing out
at numerous initiatives/establishments like “No Child Left Behind” that
we’re led to believe have been implemented to increase residential
property values instead of grades. Though the script begins to sound like
a sermon at times, it’s not intrusive enough to become distasteful. Quite
simply, it’s brazenly truthful.
However, excessive exposition can often hurt a film’s momentum and
Kaye gets unnecessarily sidetracked with the painful back-stories of his
characters. Brody’s Barthes is our central protagonist, so the sub-plot
involving his aging, ailing grandfather is essential in defining him, but the
filmmaker forces insight into the lives of almost every teacher (and a few
of the students) down our throats. Individually, each vignette is
heartrending but distracting; the majority of them have little connection
to the main narrative. Collectively, they illustrate many of the problems
that contemporary families face and, more importantly, create an
emotional crescendo leading into the inevitably tragic conclusion.
The brilliance of this casual buildup to the film’s climax is a nod to Kaye’s
storytelling aptitude. I found him utilizing the kind of in-your-face
filmmaking tactics that Spike Lee made commonplace in his early movies,
most noticeably with close-ups on a few actors who irritably address the
camera head-on (like in Do The Right Thing). In addition, he intensifies
the action with quick cuts and aggressive push-ins that elaborate on each
character’s crisis. Perfection clearly isn't his strong point; Kaye frames his
shots sloppily at times and doesn't attempt anything groundbreaking, but
maximizes the potential of tried-and-true lo-fi techniques. His stylistic
abilities are second only to Brody’s performance, which is subtle, sad and
sweet all at once. We take an emotional and psychological plunge with the
native New Yorker as he navigates a teenage wasteland of sex, drugs,
violence and depression, but it’s all just another day at school to
America’s urban youth.
Long absent since his freshman feature American History X, Detachment
is a welcome return for Tony Kaye, whose commitment to the integrity of
this story is marked by unrelenting bleakness in its tone and uncensored
cynicism regarding the state of our schools. He doesn’t portray every
educator as a saint or every student as a sinner; through Brody, he
imparts on us the uneasy truth about the direct correlation between our
failure as parents and the failure our children: we're one and the same.
The true genius in his film is not represented in the text of his
commentary, but in his ability to forge an explanatory mosaic from his
characters’ varying but related points of view. Because of this, there are
multiple mini-narratives that run through Detachment and all of them are
worthy of your attention.
Cheeri-ooh!
Fine films of Europe take Tribeca by storm
By Zach Baron, Bill Bradley and Paul Hiebert Friday, April 29, 2011
The 10th annual Tribeca Film Festival continues its tradition of bringing
European movies across the pond and showcasing some of America’s
brightest directors. Here, The Daily highlights our favorite feature films
from this year’s festival.
‘THE TRIP’
“The Trip,” starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, is the most hilarious
onscreen coupling since the original “Odd Couple” of Walter Matthau and
Jack Lemmon took the screen in 1968. Adapted from the BBC series of the
same name, “The Trip” pits Coogan and Brydon playing fictionalized
versions of themselves — Coogan, mildly depressed with his career and
domestic life; Brydon, happily married — as they drive across the
northern English countryside reviewing restaurants for The Observer. The
only plot device in the movie is driving to restaurants, which works out
just fine as Coogan and Brydon fill in the holes with their banter and
impressions. Coogan, who is best known for his role as Alan Partridge and
notably depressed about it, is often irritated by Brydon’s insistent
impressions, which eventually turn into duels. It’s these impressionistic
battles — who does the best Michael Caine, Woody Allen, Liam Neeson, et
al. — over meals and meandering along country roads that make for a
ridiculously pleasant and plotless trip through northern England. — B.B.
‘THE GUARD’
Leave it to the Irish to update the tired buddy-cop genre. “The Guard,”
starring Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle, was written and directed by
John Michael McDonagh, an Englishman raised by Irish parents. (Those
who saw his brother Martin’s 2008 black comedy “In Bruges” will be right
at home here — the two films work in similar modes.) Gleeson plays Sgt.
Gerry Boyle, an Irish guard stationed in the Connemara region —
effectively the Irish boonies — where his biggest concern seems to be
bestiality in local pastures. When a $500 million shipment of cocaine is
reportedly destined for the docks off the coast, FBI agent Wendell Everett
(Cheadle) rolls into town. Boyle and Everett’s interactions are cold (and
awkwardly hilarious) at first, but as the drug-smuggling plot gets more
complicated and the pints of Guinness are poured, their relationship
blooms. McDonagh is working with the Irish sensibilities here and nothing
is off limits (racism, certain four-letter words, IRA jokes), so you might
want to leave the kids at home. — B.B.
‘THE BANG BANG CLUB’
Based on the real-life story of four combat photographers in apartheid
South Africa in the early 1990s, “The Bang Bang Club” explores how far
one will go to get the perfect photograph and the emotional wounds that
come with it. The movie takes its name from a nickname bestowed upon
the four photographers by a South African magazine article during their
time covering the run-up to Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. The
movie, which has the expected John Wayne war movie moments, is
particularly poignant after the recent death of two veteran combat
photographers covering the conflict in Libya. — B.B.
‘BLACKTHORN’
With his desert cactus of a white beard, wrinkles crowding his eyes, and
broad-brimmed hat crammed down over his forehead, Sam Shepard could
conceivably pass for pretty much any aging outlaw bandit in history. In
Mateo Gil’s “Blackthorn,” he plays a rescued-from-the-dead and far-fromhome Butch Cassidy, doomed to live on past the 1908 gun battle with the
Bolivian Army that killed his partner, Sundance, and sentenced him to a
life of exile under an assumed name — James Blackthorn — in the
mountains of South America. Gil’s film opens roughly 20 years later, as
Blackthorn prepares to journey home to visit a nephew (or is it a son?)
he’s never met and a country he hasn’t seen since his youth. An
encounter with a thief in the desert (Eduardo Noriega) leads Blackthorn
after one last score, only to find that though the gestures of the heist are
the same, the rationale that once underpinned them has changed
disastrously. Shot on the Bolivian Plateau at high altitude and with a
skeleton crew, Gil’s film is visually stunning at times — in particular, the
final reckoning, during which the actors are mere specks of black against
the blinding white of a salt flat — and morally sophisticated. The tragedy
of the encroaching railroad and corporatization of the Western plains, Gil
suggests, was the way it atomized the gangs that once roamed them,
leaving behind men who suddenly found themselves embodying that most
fragile of modern constructs — the individual. — Z.B.
‘DETACHMENT’
People can be difficult to love. They’re selfish, unkind and often
undeserving of it.
In “Detachment,” Henry Barthes (Adrien Brody) attempts to do so
anyway, but in an emotionally removed sense where he doesn’t expect
the feelings to be reciprocated or anything to change. Barthes works as a
substitute teacher in a school system that director Tony Kaye (American
History X) depicts as a failed institution with degenerate students and
burned-out teachers. One scrawny-looking student bludgeons a cat to
death with a hammer for no apparent reason other than to break up the
meaningless monotony of the day.
The unconventional film, which employs quick scenes of flashbacks and
animation, and also stars Christina Hendricks, Lucy Liu and Marcia Gay
Harden as three well-intentioned educators weary of the Sisyphean feat,
delves into the darkest aspects of humanity without restraint. Although
Barthes believes in the redemptive power of reading, writing and thinking
for one’s self, he himself has been wounded, and knows that the scars of
life can never be erased. — P.H.