Detachment Reviews (original) (raw)

In connection with Detachment, the French film Entre les murs is repeatedly mentioned, which is also a disillusioning probe into the depths of current school conditions. The difference, of course, is that Cantet's film brilliantly uses the style of cinema verité, and therefore gives the impression of an unmediated "window into reality" - but it is, understandably, a careful construct, attempting to cover all problematic aspects of the school system in the form of a case study of one class and then one pupil . Detachment is mainly the opposite from a formal point of view - a syncretic work that flaunts its artificiality and stylization. Here we encounter completely unequivocal documentary elements (repeated cuts to an "interview" with Barthes/Brody, grainy shots from a hand-held camera, seemingly intuitive reframing of the camera, etc.), but also artistic narrative procedures (highly stylized subjective flashbacks, alternating formats, animated nipples, etc.), which are two seemingly incompatible areas of the filmmaking spectrum. Detachment can best be characterized as a frustrated cry with an attempt to appeal to the viewer through emotions - these are created here by a quick succession of heated situations that could never happen in such a short period of time in one place (one school) in reality, but here they are for us shoved under their noses in their most strained form. In addition, the film makes extensive use of fast-cut (in one scene, cleverly confusing) close-ups, which increase the impact of the unfolding situation or dialogue even more. It is, in a way, a frontal attack on the viewer's senses, which, however, finds justification in the hopelessness it discusses. The picture is a reflection of the chaos of one, or perhaps a collective mind, which does not know how to fix the system, but at the same time unfortunately knows that the system is completely **** up and dysfunctional. Here, it goes beyond the boundaries of educational institutions and, for example, in line with Henry's sick grandfather, the film also goes into the healthcare sector. "Surprisingly" it reveals a number of similarities: both environments are characterized by bureaucratic depersonalization consisting of paperwork hovering over the newly deceased, or in commercially oriented marketing presentations viewing education as a corporation tasked with fulfilling financial and other plans and generating profit. A lot of documentaries today play with elements of fiction and thus become a kind of hybrid that admits its manipulativeness or stylization - Detachment is a postmodern scattered fiction with elements of a documentary and a clearly appellative tone, which finds a certain ideological similarity with the agitation films of Michael Moore. And cinematography thus further sinks into an even more fragmented space, in which the differences between art and kitsch, pop culture and avant-garde, documentary and fiction, almost cease to exist.