"Detachment"

MAIN CHARACTERS

• Henry Barthes
• Carol Dearder
• Sarah Madison 
• Sarge Kepler
• Wiatt
• Meredith
• Doris Parker
• Charles Seaboldt
• Grandpa
• Mathias
• Greg Raymond

Is a chronicle of one month in the lives of several high school teachers, administrators and students through the eyes of a substitute teacher named Henry Barthes (Adrien Brody). Barthes' method of imparting vital knowledge to his temporary students is interrupted by the arrival of three women in his life — the damaged and naive prostitute Erica (Sami Gayle), a fellow teacher (Christina Hendricks) and a troubled teen named Meredith (Betty Kaye). These women all have profound effects on Barthes' life, forcing him to both re-discover aspects of his own personality, and to come to terms with both the tragic suicide of his mother and the impending death of his grandfather. The film is punctuated with flashbacks of scenes of Barthes' young childhood and his mother's suicide.

Sub-plots include the struggles of Dr. Parker (Lucy Liu) within her role as the school counselor and the painful torment of Principal Dearden (Marcia Gay Harden), who faces her dismissal as head of this deeply flawed school.

QUOTES

"Doublethink. To deliberately believe in lies, while knowing they're false."-Henry Barthes

"Examples of this in everyday life: "Oh, I need to be pretty to be happy. I need surgery to be pretty. I need to be thin, famous, fashionable." Our young men today are being told that women are whores, bitches, things to be screwed, beaten, and shamed. This is a marketing holocaust. Twenty-fours hours a day for the rest of our lives, the powers that be are hard at work dumbing us to death."-Henry Barthes