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Chris Cabin Beloved by Ebert. full bio of Chris Cabin A temper tantrum so shallow, aimless, and self-serious that it makes the films of Larry Clarke look genuinely optimistic in comparison, Tony Kaye's thoughtless Detachment is about as ugly and miserable as movies get, but it's not unimaginable that Kaye would take that as a compliment. As furious as it is impotent, the terminally controversial director's third film to see major release, following his epic abortion documentary, Lake of Fire, takes a spin through a month in the lives of the teachers and students of Long Island's Mineola High School, a hopelessly debauched, disturbed and downtrodden menagerie anchored by smart, suave English substitute Mr. Barthes (Adrien Brody).
If Brody does indeed give every inch of his talent to the role of Barthes, the rest of the formidable cast, including James Caan, Marcia Gay Harden, Tim Blake Nelson, Christina Hendricks, Blythe Danner, Lucy Liu and Sami Gayle, is left to be very little more than a chorus of screaming cynicism, disillusionment, and madness that nearly swallows him whole. And Carl Lund's insipid screenplay, based partially on his own experiences as a public school teacher, allows Kaye to convey his vision of a particular hell where most kids suck and most teachers are tarnished saints with the director's patented light-as-a-sledgehammer style.
Essentially an ensemble melodrama, Detachment indulges in a number of flagrant clichés, many of which are forgivable and handled competently enough. But Lund makes a major misstep by roping in a wayward teen prostitute (Gayle) to serve as proxy for both Barthes's yet-to-be-conceived children and his long-deceased mother, whose overdose is seen in jarring, momentary flashbacks throughout the film. The set-up and the knockdown for Gayle's pleasant hooker are overtly familiar, as is Barthes' relationship with a smart, artsy, overweight student, admirably played by Kaye's daughter, Betty.Presented in burnt-out, faux-Super 8 footage, the flashbacks to Barthes's mother are merely part of the quasi-abstraction of the proper narrative. Kaye also employs chalkboard animation, flutters of symbolism and a close-up interview with Brody to expand his expressionistic landscape. The style is direct and engaging, for the most part, but Kaye and Lund overplay their hand to the utmost and when beams of light do pass through the charcoal-black clouds of the narrative, it seems merely to set up a deeper plummet into the abysmal depths of being a high school teacher for a hugely undisciplined generation.
Of course, parents are the barely seen agent of troublesome ambivalence here, and it's telling that, despite its meta-cynical view of the public school system, Lund's script never seems interested in substantially confronting the absence of good parenting, but is just fine drawing broad parallels between caring for youth at Mineola and caring for the aged at a Queens hospital where Barthes's grandfather is withering away. It's a hodgepodge, tragic in sensibility and sincere in heart, and the suggestion at the (unearned and overblown) conclusion is that the life of a teacher offers not one single triumph while becoming a parent serves as the only real salvation for the youth of America. By the end, Kaye compares the public school system to nothing less than the House of Usher, content enough to disguise this misguided, wildly biased, and brief PSA as a caustic screed. Tweet Comments: Newest Oldest Most Replies Most Liked
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