This is how Detachment rises so far above the grim realities it endeavors to portray. If it throws some solid punches to disturb our own detachment, it does so with such acute compassion and cinematic elegance that consistently, it leaves us aflush with wonder at thesheer beauty of this finely wrought machinery we call human beings.
How delicately intricate we are, how incredibly perceptive, how creative in the ways we find to rewrite our own odysseys on an hourly basis… Henry takes us for a ride inside his own supposedly numbed heart and we can’t help but reverberate with, yes, love, with each tremulous beat. In the expressionistic flashbacks (red! red! listen for it!), in the devilish blackboard animations, in the Hopper-esque portraits (red!), in the eloquence of jump- and cross-cuts, Henry’s perception is everywhere. Frantic, or spent, injected with adrenalin, lightness or loss, the film’s original rhythms and vivid imagery remind us of what it’s like to feel our way into the world – what does it feel like to be alive? It feels like this. It’s absurd and complex and crazy and funny and sad, and it makes no sense, and why does the blinking eye of the answering machine break my heart? (It is red, red, red…) Why do broken chairs with dirty papers flying through them make me want to leap with joy? This is where true artistry in filmmaking makes the most of its abundant tools and disappears into the complexities of life itself.
Novelist Vivian Walsh says “hurt people hurt people.” And he’s right, of course. Now Henry might have been an existentialist to begin with, but for all his reluctance, he finally shows us the way we might have to go if we are to evolve past the self-annihilating impasse revenge and selfishness are painting us into the world over. Hurt people help people instead. Oh, I know how you hate to hear this, forgiveness, compassion and worst of all: effort. Take a little extra step beyond the self-cloying depression you call comfort and do something you’d rather dismiss.
All in all, it’s fairly safe to say that Mr. Tony Kaye, complete with blood-stained cardboard, acoustic guitar and Whole Foods recyclables, has done it again.
If I am to believe the muttering crowd that seeped out of the theater Monday night, Detachment has renewed some of our faith in the purpose of such things as film festivals and is soon to join the ranks of American History X in the pantheon of the most potent, lasting and thought-provoking films of our time. Yes. And you better wash that silly post-modernistic smirk off your face or, to quote James Caan’s Mr. Seaboldt, “I’m gonna armfuck your shit up tight. Motherfucker.”
