An educational film like no other

Detachment (2011)

Tony Kaye is and interesting director to say the least. He made the brilliant American History X (1998) and probably the most comprehensive documentary about abortion Lake of Fire (2006). Both are must see films and critically acclaimed. But what makes him so interesting is the number of unreleased movies he has made. There's three more films he made between American History X and this latest one of his, but none of those three have been released. From what I've read the studio dumped one of the movies, called Snowblind, because Kaye filed a lawsuit against the studio. Kaye himself didn't like the fact that Edward Norton had American History X recut, so Kaye decided to withdraw his name from the film. The studio didn't agree to that so Kaye sued the studio for over 200 million. I personally can't see why would he do that as American History X is pretty much a perfect movie as it is, can't really see it could be any better with different editing. Anyway this pissed the studio off and apparently it just kept, and is still keeping, postponing the release of Snowblind. Then there's a movie called Lobby Lobster which hasn't been released, for what ever reason. And finally Black Water Transit which got stuck in the post production as Capitol Films went bankrupt. With two straight out masterpieces and a ton of mystery his filmography looks extremely interesting, so when he finally got something new released I was surely looking forward for seeing it.

This movie would have made it to my top 10 of 2012, but unfortunately I just saw it now so it didn't. I'm not going to go into the plot that much as this movie is much more than a story about a substitute teacher, it's a story about the flaws in the educational system, teenage problems, parental control and ultimately evolution of the human race in the "civilized world". That's actually only a small portion of what this movie is about, but you get the idea, it goes a lot deeper than your average school drama. What this movie portrays is sad and what it implies is just plain grim. Even though it points out all the flaws in the system and asks all the right questions, it gives no answers and that's actually a great thing. It shows that there are alternatives and a possibility of a better tomorrow, but people need to thrive for it themselves, there's no magic bus ride to it. The movie is told in three layers of time, one kind of a present day recap of the events, the actual storyline with Henry the substitute teacher in the focus of this movie and one from the childhood times of Henry. The movie moves between these time lines quite effortlessly though sometimes it clearly wants you to get mixed between them, kind of like trying to guide you wrong before revealing what's actually going on. That's another thing I loved about it was that it shows you something, but implies something other as well, kind of like letting the viewer decide how far into the darkness he/she wants to journey. The cast is simply amazing, especially Adrien Brody, but pretty much everyone in this movie gives out a stellar performance. Actually my only real complaint for this movie comes from those chalkboard animations throughout the movie, they were quite unnecessary and basically just reminded you that you are watching a movie. I guess someone thought it needs a break from the grim subject, for me they were just distracting.
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