Detachment (Tony Kaye, 2011): US

Detachment (Tony Kaye, 2011): US

Reviewed by Brendan Beaghler, Santa Barbara Film Festival

Detachment was a wonderful and powerful movie it was my favorite of the festival. Compared to most movies in the festival this film had many well known actresses and actors with Adrien Brody, Lucy Lu, James Cann, and Blythe Dann. The film was directed by Tony Kaye, the same director of American History X. It was very similar  to American History X with addressing controversial issues and having highly graphic material. The issues addressed in this film involve education, relationships, and prostitution. The film has many well known actresses and actors with Adrien Brody, Lucy Lu, James Cann, and Blythe Dann.

The story follows a many students and teachers at poor public high school in New York. The main character is Henry Barthes played by Adrien Brody, teaching in a public high school in a poor low income in neighborhood in New York. The school is going through a very new regulations and has to make sure to follow the new standards the No Child-left Behind Act. Henry Barthes is an excellent teacher and is able to get the respect of from his students. At first they tried to intimidate him, but then by end of the movie they got his respect. Henry has many problems in the movie and has looks very sad and depressed. His grandfather suffers from dementia and is constantly needing his care, even though he is the hospital. Throughout the film we see clips of his mother and him as a young child, but she is hardly brought up when this happens. We eventually learn that she died from an overdose when Henry was a little child. Coming home on the bus one night (after coming from the hospital because his grandfather locked himself in bathroom) a young teenager girl, Erica, who is a prostitute, gets slapped in the face. Henry just walks out the bus after it happens and Erica follows him. She tries to sleep with him for money, but Henry refuses and is totally violated. He feels compassion and pity’s for the young girl, cleans her up and gives her a place to sleep. The school environment Henry lives at is very bad with many fights and disrespectful students, who really do not care about their education. The students at the school are very troubled and many of them do not have support system around them or anyone to talk to. There is one incident in the film, where Henry sees a young student killing a cat in his backpack. Although all of Henry is dealing with all of these different issues in the film, he has to be “detached” from all the problems and troubles that surround him.

As I said early the issues brought up in this film are very important. It shows how our education is flawed even though the teachers are doing all they can. There is a part in the film where a superintendent comes to talk to all the teachers and tells them that they need to get better test scores in order to get the wealthy people move into the neighborhoods. He then goes on to question their abilities as educators and they all walk out. Another theme involves prostitution and the treatment of women. Erica, the prostitute, is just a young girl and is having to do services for money, which no women should ever do. Besides being like American History X, it reminded me of the film Freedom Writers because they all involve how an educator makes an huge impact on these kids lives. The difference between these two movies and Detachment is this film has clips of commentary by Adrian Brody’s character about certain issues that are around him in the film.