Detachment

Utterly convinced yet unconvincing, Detachment (2011) screeches passionate incoherence about its subject: the failing U.S. public school system. Director Tony Kaye throws in every stylistic trick in the book, including but not limited to: jumpy hyper-realistic DV camerawork; surrealistic imagery; documentary footage of real public school teachers; incessant narration; hazy Super 8-style childhood flashbacks; stop-motion animation that comments on the action like an abstract Greek chorus; and the list goes on. For a film that sports such a dynamic style, the tone is disappointingly monotonous: that of high-pitched rage.

An exceptional ensemble cast tackles the material with unselfconscious commitment, with Adrien Brody leading the pack as Henry Barthes, a selfless, somber substitute, assigned to a failing public school with low-performing, aggressive students. Blythe Danner, James Caan (the best part of the movie, by far), Marcia Gay Harden, Christina Hendricks, Tim Blake Nelson, and Lucy Liu all play variations on the same theme: frazzled, good-hearted, but ineffectual to no fault of their own. In the current political climate where Ohio and Wisconsin have stripped bargaining rights from teachers, the positive portrayal of the teachers is refreshing, yet dramatically one-dimensional.

In a major, unnecessary subplot that jarringly removes the film from its dramatic and political themes, the film delves into Henry's uncomfortable, melodramatic relationship with a striking, teenage prostitute. With their connection implied to be sexual, the film at least flirts with the possibility that this near-messianic do-gooder may indeed be complex, human, and flawed-- that is, before, Kaye plays "gotcha," explaining away it all as wholesome - as if to chide the audience.

It's a shame that the film doesn't focus even a little bit on the student body. In fact, the only student with character detail is the exceptional, artistic, and ostensibly upper-middle-class Meredith (Betty Kaye), whose parents place high expectations for her to enter an Ivy League college. Do parents who demonstrate that level of concern for their children's acceptance into a prestigious university really send them to schools as dysfunctional as this one is portrayed? It stands to reason that if you can afford to send your kid to Princeton, you can afford to move to a better neighborhood with better schools, and isn't that part of the problem? Isn't that arguably THE problem, in fact?

Meredith's portrayal only goes to expose the naivete that Kaye and Lund demonstrate throughout the film regarding the economic realities that poison the system. An administrator brought in to discuss the relationship between property taxes and quality of students is unceremoniously dismissed by the faculty as opposed to engaged. What's ultimately blamed ad nauseam is poor parenting, a simplification of a much more complex societal and economic problem - and one used with gleeful abandon by the right-wing.

Regardless about how you feel about their thesis (BLAME THE PARENTS), Kaye and Lund do not arrive at this conclusion without employing hyperbole like the most unhinged of fire-breathing polemicists. It's all disappointing for those of us who consider the public school system to be sufficiently terrible as is.