Produced by Greg Shapiro, Carl Lund, Bingo Gubelmann, Austin Stark, Benji Kohn, and Chris Papavasiliou, the film was released on March 16, 2012, to mixed reviews.
Substitute teacher Henry Barthes is called in for a one-month assignment, teaching English classes at a high school with many students performing at a low grade level.
On his first day, he assesses his students' writing skills with an essay regarding how they believe they will be remembered after they die. During this class, he observes many acts of hostility and antagonism, including a student yelling at him and threatening him physically, as well as two students verbally harassing pupil Meredith, with whom he becomes acquainted after class. Later that day, he witnesses more aggression, when the mother of a student who has been expelled for harassing teacher Sarah Madison confronts her.
After school, Henry is called in to the care facility to see his grandfather who is suffering from dementia, as he has locked himself in the bathroom and will not come out. On his way out, Henry expresses his frustrations with a staff member, as he believes his grandfather is not being taken care of properly.
On the bus ride home, Henry sees young sex worker Erica get hit by a man who refuses to pay her. Erica attempts to convince Henry to have sex with her, which he refuses.
The next day, Henry reads aloud to the class through the essays from earlier. After reading an anonymous essay (which is assumed to be Meredith's), he becomes aware of her struggles with suicidal ideation.
After visiting his grandfather, Henry again runs into Erica, who he invites up to his apartment. There, he feeds her, cleans the cuts and scrapes on her legs, and allows her to stay for the night. Over the next few nights, she is allowed to stay, though he informs her that she cannot stay forever.
At school, the staff have a memorial service for a teacher who has passed away, though none of them liked him, nor do they know how he died.
Later, a speaker gives a talk to the faculty, discussing how the low test scores are bringing down real estate prices, outraging the exhausted teachers. It is revealed there that Principal Carol Dearden is being fired soon. After the talk, Sarah asks Henry back to her house for dinner. When Henry returns home late, Erica is still awake, waiting for him. She is upset that he went out without telling her, to which he informs her that she cannot expect him to tell her such things. However, Henry believes that Erica is showing responsibility, since she went grocery shopping and prepared dinner, which pleases him.
Back at school, the counsellor Dr. Parker talks to a student, Missy, about her low grades and lack of ambition, to which she seems to lack any care about. Dr. Parker tries to tell Missy about the importance of education later in life, but she loses her composure as she expresses her frustrations over her own life, which has supposedly not gone how she wished.
Henry is later called into the care facility, where Erica has been waiting for him, because his grandfather has become gravely ill. Henry's grandfather is scared, as he believes he is responsible for the disquiet in Henry's life, and he feels that he cannot leave him. Henry tells his grandfather that he's done nothing wrong and he can let himself go if he wants to. After their visit, Henry and Erica go to the park, where Erica asks about Henry's mother. He details her suicide, the result of an overdose. He also implies that his grandfather had sexually abused his mother, but says that he never felt unsafe around either of them.
The next day at school, Meredith shows Henry an artwork that she made for him. After she mentions that Henry seems like he needs someone to talk to, Henry becomes concerned, as he believes she is referring to herself. When Meredith opens up about her struggles and becomes visibly upset, Henry tries to comfort her. She hugs him, now very upset, asking Henry to console her. Sarah walks in on them (causing Meredith to run away) and expresses her concern that Henry was acting inappropriately towards Meredith. Henry insists that he was just comforting her. However, becoming so horrified by even the mention of committing such acts himself, Henry panics and is overcome by memories of his mother and grandfather.
Later that day, Henry is informed that his grandfather has died. Feeling on-edge after all that's happened, Henry informs Erica he can no longer take care of her, and has social services take her to a foster home. She becomes very distraught, begging him to let her stay, but he reluctantly maintains his stance.
The next day at school, Meredith has set up a cupcake stall. Henry goes to talk to her about the day before, still trying to console her, but she seems reluctant to talk to him. She then eats one of her cupcakes, which she laced with poison, and dies by suicide.
Later, he decides to go visit Erica in the foster care facility. She euphorically embraces him.
In the same month, director Tony Kaye said in an interview. "My agent sent me this fantastic piece of writing by a guy called Carl Lund. A writer. One of the things that I felt was how real it was. And writing is really about research and speech and I thought this guy’s really done his homework. In fact it turned out that he had been a teacher. So then it all became very clear. And then when it really began, if you like, really really began was when Adrien Brody sort of popped up and said I’ll do this. A couple of weeks before we were supposed to start to shoot. And then I decided myself at that point I’m gonna hang the whole thing on you [Brody]. And try to build out your character of Henry much more and make it all everything about you. Just you.” The interviewer then asks Kaye if he rebuilt the script at that point. Kaye responds, “Well I reinterpreted it, yeah. When Carl first wrote it, I believe it was a very vignette ensemble thing." ”Carl's script was very impressionistic, and [a] part of what I do, sometimes, [is] very impressionistic storytelling. I used that to its full, here, to try and make sense of it all....[3] There's more [footage] of Marcia Gay Harden and Bryan Cranston [which] I've got in the hard drives, and I'm hoping to [get] it out, in maybe a longer cut."[4]
Release
Detachment premiered on April 25, 2011, at the Tribeca Film Festival.[1] Pretty Pictures acquired rights to distribute the film in France.[5] In September 2011, Tribeca Film acquired U.S. distribution rights with Celluloid Dreams repping worldwide sales rights.[6] Territories sold include Benelux (Wild Bunch), Italy (UBU), Middle East (Shooting Stars), Russia (CP Digital), Latin America (California), India (Pictureworks), Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam (PT Parkit) and Taiwan (Cineplex).[7]
On September 9, 2011, Detachment screened in competition at the 37th Deauville American Film Festival in France.[8] It won both the Revelations Prize and the International Critics' Award.[9] On September 18, Detachment was announced as the Closing Night Film at the Woodstock Film Festival, where Kaye was the recipient of the Honorary Maverick Award.[10]
On October 12, 2011, Detachment screened in competition at the Valenciennes International Festival of Action and Adventure Films in France, where it won the Grand Prize and the Audience Award.[11] Later, on October 26, the film screened in competition at the 24th Tokyo International Film Festival.[12] It received the award for Best Artistic Contribution, sharing honors with the film Kora.[13]
Detachment also screened in competition at the 35th São Paulo International Film Festival and won the Audience Award for Best Foreign Language Film, sharing honors with Chicken with Plums.[14] On November 16, Detachment screened at the 53rd Muestra Internacional de Cine in Mexico.[15]
In January 2012, Detachment won Best Picture at the Ramdam Film Festival in Tournai, Belgium.[16][17]
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 57% based on 72 reviews, with an average rating of 5.8/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Detachment's heart is in the right place, but overall it doesn't offer any solutions to its passionate ranting."[18] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 52% based on reviews from 20 critics.[19]
Peter Travers from Rolling Stone awarded the film three out of four stars, praising the performances of Adrien Brody, Marcia Gay Harden and Lucy Liu. "Detachment gets to you. It hits hard", he wrote.[20]
A reviewer for Student Handouts, which reviews books and films for those working in education, said: "It easily makes Dangerous Minds look like a pandering Lifetime made-for-TV movie."[21]
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