If the students in Detachment don’t necessarily appreciate the significance of Orwell or Poe, the film certainly encourages its viewer to. Tambourine Man” to teach her students about metaphor.
It’s a far more intellectually ambitious approach than the one Michelle Pfeifer took in Dangerous Minds, where she dusted off the hippy-dippy lyrics of Bob Dylan's “Mr.
The film’s script, by Carl Lund, opens with a quote from Albert Camus, while its protagonist makes frequent references to the works of everyone from Orwell to Poe. Where Detachment also supersedes Driver, and, for that matter, most movies about teachers, is in its lofty literary allusions. Like Taxi Driver, Detachment also resolves its story with a disturbing act of violence, although here it’s a bit more heartbreaking because its victim is truly an innocent. While this film doesn’t quite achieve Taxi Driver’s sense of visual poetry ( Detachment’s look is a little too digital-cheap for my taste), it is certainly its spiritual cousin. Both are stories of lost and damaged protagonists struggling to make sense of a vicious and loveless world while seeking redemption though the protection of a young female prostitute.
In many ways, Detachment has more in common with Scorsese’s Taxi Driver than it does other “teacher” movies. I say “poetic” because Henry’s character often describes his experiences of the school environment through lyrical voiceover, while the film, itself, often drifts into artistic, animated interludes and montages.
The additional presence of TV mainstays Christina Hendricks (“Mad Men”), William Peterson (“C.S.I.”) and Bryan Cranston (“Breaking Bad”) makes Detachment sometimes feel like a pilot for one of the bleakest, if most poetic, TV shows about high school ever made. While these characters are somewhat interesting and the actors all fine, none of them are given much to do, so the film ends up feeling a bit over-cast.
The film is strongest when it sticks to Henry’s storyline - specifically, the push-pull tension resulting from his need for intimacy and aversion to it - but it sometimes veers into a series of underdeveloped subplots featuring the school’s other staff members, played by everyone from Lucy Liu to Marcia Gay Harden to James Caan. Meanwhile, outside of school, Henry meets a teenage prostitute, played by Sami Gayle of TV’s “Blue Bloods,” who challenges Henry’s refusal to let anyone get too close. We are given hints through the occasional flashback of a troubled relationship with his mother that may have caused this propensity to detachment, but the film mostly focuses on Henry’s present tense dealings with the apathetic students and burned-out staff at his latest assignment. Academy Award winner Adrien Brody ( The Pianist, King Kong) stars in the film as Henry Barthes, a substitute teacher who manages to avoid any real connection with his students or fellow teachers by never staying too long at any one school. Bickering neighbors who seem intent on ruining. Maryann must come to terms with her pride and feelings of helplessness, even though she's clearly beloved by the town as the volunteer church choir director, responsible for staging the annual Christmas pageant. It's the sort of story that we already know the ending to (or at least we think we do). Pat finds work stringing up Christmas lights with Big Jim (Richard Moll of TV's Night Court), while Thom accepts a job from smarmy town mayor Ernie Trevor (Chris Elliot) to paint a mural of Placerville. So the Kinkade brothers decide to help out by getting jobs for the season, in hopes of raising enough to save the family cottage. Unfortunately, times have been hard on the small town's tourist industry, and Maryann faces potential foreclosure on her home. It's Christmas break at Berkley in 1977, and a young Thom (Jared Padalecki of TV's Supernatural and Gilmore Girls) heads home to Placerville with younger brother Pat (Aaron Ashmore of TV's Smallville) to visit their mother, Maryann (Marcia Gay Harden). Produced by Kinkade and his wife Nanette, the film is "inspired by true events," depicting a pivotal story from the painter's college years. Christmas Cottage has its charm, and certainly isn't the mess many would expect. Throw out your preconceptions, because the movie's actually not bad.
So when I was assigned Thomas Kinkade's Christmas Cottage, a straight-to-DVD film releasing today, some of my friends and co-workers reacted as if I was reviewing the bottom of the film barrel. But many believers also dismiss the work of the "Painter of Light" as commercial kitsch, and anything but real art. Thomas Kinkade has become a very rich man selling his paintings, many of them to Christians.