Tony Kaye's new film is called Detachment, which strikes me
as an inappropriate title simply because the director himself seems incapable
of taking a detached approach to any subject. When Kaye makes a feature film,
which he has managed to do three times in the past 15 years, he throws himself
wholeheartedly into it. This uncompromising style can make his films
feel shrill, didactic and hyperbolic – pictures that hammer home their points with
sledgehammer subtlety – and those accusations will surely be thrown at his
latest. One scene in particular, in which a teacher admonishes a
scantily clad girl by showing her a photo of diseased vagina, could stand as
Detachment's modus operandi. But while his techniques may be questionable,
there's no doubting the man's sincerity, and when this socially conscious
filmmaker is tackling a theme that has already been talked to death, perhaps
the audience needs to be shouted at in order to take notice?
Whatever its flaws may be (and I can't deny that its flaws
are glaring), I found Detachment to be engrossing and often astonishing, and a welcome
return for a filmmaker unafraid of letting raw emotion drive his choices. The
stage for his explosive film is an American high school, populated by feckless
kids and despairing teachers. Henry Barthes (Adrien Brody) is a new arrival, a
substitute English teacher whose determination to never get attached to the youngsters in his
care means he's the perfect man to call when you need someone to hold the fort,
before he slips away as quietly as he came. We've seen this movie before, of
course, and we assume we can map out the plot from here – Henry will initially face resistance from the truculent teens before
gradually winning their favour and helping them find their voice. We think we
know where Detachment is going, but Tony Kaye isn't interested in playing the genre game.
Detachment is a polemical tirade against a system that the
Kaye and screenwriter Carl Lund (a former public school teacher) see as being
fundamentally broken. A whole generation of kids have been failed by their
teachers, by their parents and by themselves, and neither the film's director
nor screenwriter are ready or willing to offer easy answers. Instead, the film
unfolds in a series of heightened vignettes, showing us teachers at the end of
their tether or in confrontation with students. Many of these encounters end in
screaming matches (witness Lucy Liu's meltdown when faced with an apathetic
youngster) or threats (Christina Hendricks' character is threatened with rape),
but Brody provides the film with a necessary oasis of calm at its centre. He is
perfect casting for this noble, if sometimes misguided, martyr-like protagonist and he
responds with his most empathetic and compelling performance in years.
In fact, the cast is the one facet of Detachment that surely
everyone will agree is spectacular. Kaye has enlisted an incredible line-up of
actors, with Marcia Gay Harden, James Caan and Tim Blake Nelson joining those
stars already mentioned, while talented performers such as Bryan
Cranston, William Petersen and Blythe Danner turn up in little more than
cameos. However, the film is comprehensively stolen from under the noses of
these famous names by two newcomers, each of whom bring an enormous amount of
emotion to their performances. The director's daughter Betty Kaye plays
Meredith, a sensitive and artistic teen bullied into introversion over her weight
and rumoured homosexuality, who forms a deep attachment to Henry, and Kaye's
performance makes her the film's most sympathetic character, just about
managing to transcend cliché. As 15 year-old prostitute Erica, Sami Gayle
achieves a similar feat, making the awkward setup of her adaption to platonic
domesticity with Henry convincing and even touching, and her final scenes in
the film are heartbreaking.
Perhaps Brody, Kaye and Gayle are so effective because they
underplay while everything around them is delivered at a frenzied pitch. Kaye's
direction is feverish and intense, utilising garish close-ups and lurid colours,
and linking scenes with animated inserts or fantasy sequences. His style
recalls Oliver Stone in his early 90's fervour, but there is a sense of Kaye
simply throwing everything he has at the movie to see what sticks. This is a
90-minute film that contains enough characters and incident to fill a
miniseries, and the director's determination to batter us stylistically,
thematically and emotionally makes the movie as exhausting as it is
invigorating. Tony Kaye has already made one great film (his 2006 abortion
documentary Lake of Fire) and one near-great film (his controversial and
compromised American History X), and the messy Detachment doesn't come close to achieving
any kind of greatness. However, it does feel like a vital piece of work from a
filmmaker whose provocations come from a very genuine place, and perhaps
that makes it just as valuable as a great movie. You may love Tony Kaye's films
or you may hate them, but detachment isn't an option.