Starring: Adrien Brody, Christina Hendricks, James Caan, Lucy Liu, Sami Gayle and Marcia Gay Harden
Running Time: 100 minutes
Genre: Drama
Detachment is an astonishing film. Plain and simple. It is an emotionally devastating and unapologetic look into the American schooling system and powerful critique of it. For anyone who has not heard of Tony Kaye, he is the man who made the legendary American History X and then disowned it. Yet again, he has crafted a harrowing, brutal and poignant film that is already on my Top 10 of 2012 list.
The film follows Henry Barthes (Brody), who is a substitute teacher, over the space of three weeks in an underprivileged High School. What will follow is Henry's encounters with a new love interest (Hendricks), a young prostitute (Gayle) and a troubled social outcast (Kaye's daughter Betty). Firstly, both Gayle and Kaye are extraordinary. Gayle in particular (who I mistook as Emma Watson initially), whose role as Erica and her misconstrued feelings for Henry and adolescent naivety as essentially a child in a horrible and disgusting world is heartbreaking. Kaye's tragic Meredith is a character we have all seen in our own lives, someone weighed down by ridicule and unhappiness, but with Henry's arrival she feels a connection, yet again tragically misconstrued. Adrien Brody carries the film, he is immense and gives a performance of emotional substance and sensitivity. Henry is a man caught in-between his job and his humanity and Brody excels with aplomb. The second leads are a quality bunch and each shine through their relatively minor roles, with Lucy Liu and James Caan in particular standing out and extra kudos to Marcia Gay Harden (she's always wonderful) as the Principal under pressure (at work and home). Basically, the level of acting on display is fantastic.
What Detachment lacks in big explosions and CGI, it more than makes up for in emotionally powerful and challenging material. While not an easy film to watch, Detachment is a harrowing, but totally engrossing film from Kaye that will leave you as angry with the events it portrays as it will satisfied at the wonderful film-making and acting talent on display. An absolute must.
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