Continuing our independent film day, let’s talk about “Detachment.” This is only the second film Tony Kaye has ever directed, serving as his loooooong awaited followup movie to 1998’s American History X (which saw Edward Norton give the best performance of his career as a neo-nazi gang leader), and this time he’s tackling another potentially hopeless topic: modern education.
What Works: In the movie, Adrien Brody plays a substitute teacher, so automatically this movie is tailor-made for me as I spent years as a substitute teacher and my name is also Brody. Right off the bat, the movie has two huge advantages for me that it won’t have for anyone else, but objectively I do think the movie is very compelling when it sticks to the classroom. It does a great job of capturing the hopeless grind of modern education, the way even the “better” students don’t even put up an effort to learn, and the way it may be slowly driving teachers crazy. [No one understands what a mentally stressful job teaching is unless they’ve done it.] Also, the supporting cast is aces as James Caan, Christina Hendricks, and Lucy Liu play fellow teachers, with cameos from Marcia Gay Harden and William Petersen in the only thing I’ve seen him in post-CSI.
What Doesn’t Work: Alright, so there’s half a great film here but the other half is a mess. Much like Spike Lee, it appears that Tony Kaye cannot let his true artist out—-and it’s obvious the guy has talent—-without going overboard and suffocating it in pretentious, off-putting technique and unnecessary subplots. For example, the subplots where Adrien has to care for his dying father and nurtures a teenage prostitute into something better don’t work at all, and Bryan Cranston shows up in one meager scene with a role that feels like it was left on the editing room floor so why cast such a gifted actor at all? Eventually, the movie gets lost in a drugged-out haze of indulgence and overwrought surrealism, and I can’t help but think the material and subject matter deserved better.
What I Would Have Done Differently: No hyper cuts, no acid-washed flash cuts, no fantasy sequences, and no ultra-“indie” animation between heavy scenes. Leave all the MTV-bullshit in your bag of tricks, and just tell the story with the straightforward clarity it deserves. Also, the more time spent in the classroom the better, and all of Adrien Brody’s scenes outside the classroom could be severely shortened or cut entirely.