Detachment (2011)

Promotional still from the movie

Over the holiday weekend, I had the pleasure of seeing "Detachment." The film is directed by Tony Kaye, who is best know for his Oscar nominated film "American History X." This film stars Adrian Brody, Christina Hendricks, Lucy Liu, James Caan, and newcomer Sami Gayle.

The story is that of a long term substitute teacher, Henry Barthes, portrayed by Brody. Henry is a very disconnected person who seems like he has little to no feelings for those around him. He is the lone caretaker of his ailing grandfather, and experiences flashes back into his traumatic past. Somehow he ends up taking in a young girl who was prostituting herself near his apartment building, his aim to help get her back on her feet and off to a youth rehabilitation center. Henry's personal story is the main focus of the film, although it was marketed as a feel good story about a high school substitute that makes a difference in a failing school. His experiences in the high school where he subs is the backdrop for the rest of the issues his character faces. A good portion of his realizations occur while at school, although they focus mainly on his own personal endeavors.

I had been very eager to see this film for a long time and I really enjoyed it. I found that it took an interesting approach to what could otherwise be skewed as a feel good high school film. It presented real life issues in a very bleak light and expected the audience to be able to handle what they saw. Because the directed took this approach, it became apparent that the director was trying to bring a realistic feeling to the film. The realism did not feel forced, but natural. I believed that the issues covered in the film were issues that teenagers and adults face on a regular basis. It also intrigued me how the characters took each issue and personally dealt with it.

One example is one of the girls in Henry's English 10A class. Meredith is a girl who was bullied constantly, an artistic girl who liked taking photos, but was a disappointment to her parents. She wished to go to art school but her parents dashed her dreams, instead continuously berating her for being different. She turned to Henry, who felt burdened by her and unsure if he could help because he felt very similar feelings of emptiness, and so when she felt she had no one else to turn to, she killed herself.

This movie did not play with the emotions of the audience. It gave to viewers exactly what it promised; a bleak vision of a lower middle class high school and the children and adults whose lives center around the school. I give this film an A-.

Beloved (2011)

Promotional still from the film

Christophe Honoré is by far my favorite director. I first came across his films in high school when I rented his film Dans Paris from Blockbuster. Since that chance encounter with him, I have not been able to get enough. I've seen pretty much his entire filmography, and that includes films produced by him, presented by him, written by him, and of course those directed by him. Until seeing Beloved, however, I had never seen one of his films in theaters. So when I saw that the Criterion Cinema in downtown New Haven was showing it, I knew it was a chance I couldn't pass up.

Honoré has a very distinct style. It is often celebrated by critics, but also condemned. After the release of his 2004 Ma Mère and 2006 Dans Paris, Honoré was praised as the grandchild of the New Wave, which is one of the most influential film movements of the recent age. In recent years, however, he has been criticized as becoming too sentimental. With this last sentiment, I would have to disagree. 

Beloved is Honoré's second musical. It follows the lives of two women over the course of their lives, documenting their loves and their losses and everything in between. The two women are mother and daughter. The mother, played by legendary Catherine Deneuve, has long standing affair with the love of her life, father of her child, and once husband, even though she divorced him and married again. The daughter falls in love with a gay man, all the while ignoring the one man who loves her for who she is. 

The film is documented in segments of decades. This allows the exploration of various facets of the women's lives and how time has or hasn't changed them. There is also a parallel created between mother and daughter. Decisions that have been made by the mother are decisions that the daughter tries desperately to replicate, but the gravity of her situation of being in love with a gay man forever blocked her from any type of true happiness or contentedness that her mother might have found. This can show the affects of an upbringing and the environment that a child grows up in, not to mention the changing of the times. While the mother remains married to her current husband, having an affair on the side, she finds a way to balance her lives and have some semblance of happiness. The mother is from a time of the past, where a sort of restrained nature is applauded over acting out. This is a time that the daughter can't replicate. Even with the openness of relationships and sexuality in the modern age, the daughter cannot hold together the two relationships she has, the one with the gay man and the one with the man who truly loves her.

As a whole, the film was very well put together. It was very distinctly Honoré, which is what I love to see. There is a lack of explanation in his films, but rather a focus on shots to do the explaining lost in the dialogue. A lot of what you feel when watching Beloved comes from from exactly that, watching. There is much more to pick up from the photography than from the writing. The only thing I would have to put in the negatives for this film was it's soundtrack. The fact that the film was a musical greatly took away from its impact. Aside from one or two of the songs, most of the music felt forced and out of place. It felt like I was watching a musical rather than a film, which Honoré has avoided in the past. Over all I give this film a B-. 

Bullhead (2011)

Screen Shot captured from film

I've been wanting to see Bullhead for a very long time, and thankfully my roommate ordered the film off Amazon.com so we had the pleasure of viewing it on Oct. 3. The film's country of origin is Belgium, and therefore it's proper title is Rundskop, although it's anglicized title is Bullhead. It was directed by Michael R. Roskam and was released in 2011.

The film follows Jacky Vanmarsenille, played by Matthias Schoenaerts, a young cattle farmer who enters into a shady deal with a Flemish beef trader. Their agreement involves Jacky illegally injecting his cattle with undetectable steroids to be sold to the trader. As soon as Jacky enters into this agreement, he realizes his mistake and does everything in his ability to somehow break their contract. While that main plot unfolds, there is also a subplot that follows Jacky's own drug addiction which stems from an early childhood trauma.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film. It may have had the facade of your run of the mill gangster saga, but unlike Lawless, Bullhead played to it's strengths. Yes, the main plot followed a gang related tale, but it was the subplot that propelled the film, and at times overshadowed. The main plot of illegally injecting cattle with steroids acted as a sort of metaphor for Jacky's drug addiction. It is startling to see in one shot Jacky injecting his cows, and then in the very next shot Jacky injecting himself. Most of the time, shots of Jacky shooting up where juxtaposed with close ups of the cattle moving through their pens.

 Jacky's code name to the police is fittingly "Bullhead." It makes sense to compare Jacky to his animals, especially a bull. The reason Jacky started injecting drugs was due to the loss of his testicles when he was a child after being brutally attack by another boy. Jacky feels entirely useless in the sense that he cannot give live or provide for a woman the way he feels is natural. He looks to himself as a steer, which is a castrated bull, and views himself to be wholly useless to the collective. He is entirely singular and alone. It makes sense that he is called Bullhead, however, because he projects the image of normalcy onto his life, and his desire to be a "bull" overshadows any other desire he might have. He injects steroids to numb the pain of his loss of masculinity and to make up for the fact that he can't ever be what he so yearns to be.

The metaphor of animality in the film is a strong one. Quite plainly, Jacky is a beast. He views himself as one, as do most other characters of the film. His cruel and untamable nature is showcased when he tortures two mechanics, brutally beats a man outside of a nightclub, and when he climactically ends his own life by overdosing on the very drugs that he injects into his cattle. And strangely, just as it is natural to feel remorse at the fact that animals are put on hormones and injected with steroids, it is remorseful to see Jacky go. Just as an animal is helpless, Jacky is helpless.

I would recommend this film to anyone who has an interest in foreign film, as well as an interest in film that works as a metaphor. It is vastly engaging, and also makes for a good conversation after you finish viewing. I give it a B+.