I don’t really know what to say about this movie, so I’ll just start off with Adrien Brody (The Pianist). He plays substitute teacher Henry Barthes at a high school where teachers and principals are desperate and burnt out, where students are out of control and no parents show up for parents night.
Henry sees himself as an empty shell and so students are unable to hurt him. His grandpa is in a health facility, practically on his death bed. His father left his mother and him when he was very little. His mother was an alcoholic and apparently abused by his grandfather during her childhood. His mother had committed suicide.
He takes care of a girl he once encountered on the street and tries to keep her from selling her body to men. One of his students, Meredith, finally feels visible because of him and develops a kind of infatuation.
Everything crumbles down around him, and he is still standing – a hollow man.
Although I found this movie a bit over the top most of the time, it is eerily unsettling and it gives us a caricature of how detached a lot of people seem to be becoming. When you detach yourself from something or someone it is deliberate, conscious. Detachment is not a verb, and is something we have little or no control over.