Tony Kaye's flick, Detachment (2011), is a glowing mix of confused cinematography, brilliant acting, heavy-handed themes, and poignant story telling.

The film starts off on shaky footing with an opening akin to a civil service announcement, advocating the importance of teachers, an unnecessary dose of propaganda to preface a film that could have managed to get the idea across without it. Hang in there though, it is much better than those first few minutes would make it seem.

In Kaye's drama, Adrian Brody portrays Henry Barthes, a dedicated, substitute English high school teacher who tries to keep his students in line with steady resolve and chooses his noncommittal job-post in order to maintain distance from the kids he teaches.

Barthes and his colleagues, Christina Hendrickson and Lucy Liu are cast among them, seem as broken as their students. The kids seethe with anger and sadness, and the teachers are spat upon and cursed at every day and go home to lonely personal lives. For Barthes this includes: watching over his dying grandfather, remembering his mother’s suicide, trying to save a teenage prostitute (an unforgettable performance by Sami Gayle) as well as a deeply depressed artsy student--all the while barely keeping his head above water.

At points the cinematography emphasizes the emotional impact of the story, especially in the numerous scenes with theater-esque mise en scène which depict stark and simple back drops with long shots of characters talking that effectively dramatize subtle moments the story. However, Director Kaye missteps in juxtaposing too many techniques as if he just figured out how to use Final Cut Pro, as demonstrated by black and white stills of a barbed wire fence followed with low-lit, color shots of Barthes giving short close-up monologues in an attempt to create an intimacy between his character and the audience. The problem is, the editing of the film makes these effects clash, and consequently the story has a jolted resonance.

There have been a string of films similar to Detachment, like Half Nelson (2006) with Ryan Gosling or the French film The Class (2008), about empathic young men trying to make a difference in the lives of the kids they’re teaching while barely hanging on to their own sanity. 

So what does Kaye’s Detachment offer that those don’t? Despite Brody and Gayle’s excellent performances, not a whole lot, other than the added hooker plotline. It is essentially the same kind of story about the same kind of people--but even though it keeps being told, until our education system is improved it’s a story we can’t afford to forget.