Professor Christen Enos

Changzong Liu
ENGW 1102
March 20, 2016

The Stranger

Movie review on Detachment

And never have I felt so deeply at one and the same time so detached from myself and so
present in the world. Albert Camus
There is a type of movie I call instructive film. Those movies are always inspirational, are
able to warm peoples hearts; there are always problem students straightening up with the help of
a mentor; there must be some frustration, though, there always will be a generally happy ending.
At that moment, the teacher almost changed the destiny of every single child who is going to fall
into darkness with his extraordinary personality charm. It makes you feel that if there are a little
bit more teachers like him, the world will be lighter.
At the beginning of the movie, we can see a troubled class in a troubled school with full of
problem students. Henry Barthes(Adrian Brody), the protagonist, as a substitute teacher, drove
away a trouble-maker to clean the atmosphere, praised a girl who is ofter assaulted and bullied by
others to express his value orientation. The unusual appearance on the stage is so anticipating
that this is the one who will achieve something, change the class, even the whole school.
However, this is not what it is like. Detachment is a story coming to collapse but fail to do.
The problems are not that easy for either the school or Henry Barthes, the world is not that
simple that can be saved by a crew of good teachers. Consequently, education is transformed to
Dark Arts. The school is a pathological blurred miniature of society, fulfilled with apprehension
and nervousness, everyone stiffly sticks in their own social characters, to do what is known futile.
Henry Barthes makes me think of Travis Bickle(Robert De Niro) in Taxi Driver, especially
the part that Henry help a street hooker, struggling in the mud of life and seeking for hope and

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salvation. The most similar part is that both of them are chasing something beautiful but
untouchable.
When I have a glimpse of timeline, there is 20 minutes left, it wont be a Les Choristes-like
story, but people will still have the hope that the school doesnt have to be shut down, the
headmaster doesn't have to be dismissed, the chubby girl really doesn't have to suicide, Henry
Barthes doesn't have to leave There are a lot of not have to, just like the dreams in the pure
paradise. Teacher should lead us to find soul, there should be golden port in the ruins of
childhood. No matter how filthy parents life is, children should sit around a table under the
grape trellis.
More or less, people just still have the extravagant dream, fantasizing that come across a
mentor: a castaway, dolorous gentleman, no bad habits, bearing heavy chain of growth, living in
a rented apartment filled with IKEA furniture, correcting students papers in the midnight,
taking bus to school in the morning. Nevertheless, we have our own way to go. There is nothing
to substitute ourselves, neither teachers nor parents.
However, it is exactly because of the aspiration for detachment, some people and some
stories are able to be immortal.

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