Detachment
Academy Award winner Adrien Brody stars as Henry Barthes, an educator with a true talent to connect with his students. Yet Henry has chosen to bury his gift. By spending his days as a substitute teacher, he conveniently avoids any emotional connections by never staying anywhere long enough to form an attachment to either students or colleagues. When a new assignment places him at a public school where a frustrated, burned-out administration has created an apathetic student body, Henry soon becomes a role model to the disaffected youth. In finding an unlikely emotional connection to the students, teachers, and a runaway teen he takes in from the streets, Henry realizes that he's not alone in his life and death struggle to find beauty in a seemingly vicious and loveless world.
2.6 out of 5 based on 14 reviews
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Omniscore:
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| Certificate |
15 |
| Genre |
Drama |
| Director |
Tony Kaye |
| Cast |
Christina Hendricks, Marcia Gay Harden, James Caan Adrien Brody |
| Studio |
G2 Pictures Cinema |
| Release Date |
July 2012 |
| Running Time |
98 mins |
| |
Academy Award winner Adrien Brody stars as Henry Barthes, an educator with a true talent to connect with his students. Yet Henry has chosen to bury his gift. By spending his days as a substitute teacher, he conveniently avoids any emotional connections by never staying anywhere long enough to form an attachment to either students or colleagues. When a new assignment places him at a public school where a frustrated, burned-out administration has created an apathetic student body, Henry soon becomes a role model to the disaffected youth. In finding an unlikely emotional connection to the students, teachers, and a runaway teen he takes in from the streets, Henry realizes that he's not alone in his life and death struggle to find beauty in a seemingly vicious and loveless world.
Reviews
The Evening Standard
Derek Malcolm
“The film avoids the Hollywood trope of the inspired teacher who wins out with his pupils in the end but its essential honesty is dissipated by a fractured style that doesn’t always avoid pretension. If Detachment is only partially successful, it is still more watchable than most school sagas.”
13/07/2012
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The Financial Times
Nigel Andrews
“Like the recent Margaret it rages against the dying of the light in a country where too many people think the lights are still on.”
12/07/2012
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The Guardian
Andrew Pulver
“Kaye turns this parable into a full-on psychodrama ... it's watchable enough, but the bludgeoning screenplay seems undercooked compared to the high-grade actors on show.”
12/07/2012
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The Independent
Anthony Quinn
“A drama about the problem of teenagers that sounds like it was written by one, though the solemn references to a "marketing holocaust" and a "carnival of pain" are the work of writer Carl Lund, possibly egged on by Kaye himself.”
13/07/2012
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The Los Angeles Times
Robert Abele
“Former teacher Carl Lund's lost-souls screenplay has all the hallmarks of something issue-smart yet dramatically amateurish, which in the hands of filmmaker Tony Kaye — not known for subtlety — certainly makes for emotional unpredictability.”
23/05/2012
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The New York Times
Stephen Holden
“To camouflage its trashier impulses, Detachment buttresses its jeremiad about the failing public-education system with quotations from The Stranger by Albert Camus and a reading from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe. The shriller its didacticism, the more unhinged it becomes. But even at its most ludicrous — when it is shouting into your ear — its sheer audacity grabs your attention.”
15/03/2012
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The Observer
Philip French
“The sort of thing that gives pessimism a bad name”
15/07/2012
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The Scotsman
Alistair Harkness
“The pupils, [meanwhile,] are too wrapped up in themselves to care at all about their futures, let alone envision a way to secure one for themselves. All of which makes teaching seem relentlessly grim, something Detachment is a little too intent on impressing upon us as Brody’s saintly educator finds himself trying to save – groan – an under-age prostitute ”
12/07/2012
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Time Out
Tom Huddleston
“Kaye’s direction is audacious, chucking in animated inserts and murky flashbacks to occasionally bracing effect. But his intentions are never clear ... Whatever the answers are, ‘Detachment’ doesn’t work, but it’s a fascinating, hypnotic and sometimes powerful failure.”
11/07/2012
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The Times
The Times
“Stylistically bold, emotionally weighted and infuriatingly indulgent, this study of education and family may not be entirely convincing but it has a verve and daring that makes for a compelling watch.”
13/07/2012
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The Sunday Times
Jonathan Dean
“With depressive teachers, battered teenage prostitutes and Adrien Brody’s abusive grandad, you wonder what you did to deserve this.”
15/07/2012
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Total Film
Neil Smith
“While you can admire the rigour of director Tony Kaye’s bleak vision, it’s impossible to take his didactic diatribe as seriously as it takes itself.”
02/07/2012
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Empire Magazine
Angie Errigo
“Incredible performances from the cast, but Detachment is perhaps just too pretentiously depressing for its own good.”
09/07/2012
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The Daily Telegraph
Tim Robey
“Grappling with the dilapidation of America’s school system is fair enough, but the movie is painfully undone by its pretentious poetry of despair. ”
13/07/2012
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