British director Tony Kaye, provocateur more than technician, has done something rather odd here, a sort of nihilistic ‘90s UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE ‘redux.’ Set in the present, it adds on an elaborate backstory to fill in the melancholia of Adrien Brody’s talented, but engagement-phobic substitute teacher. And if much is too good to just write it off, too many wrong turns keep it from connecting; not helped by Kaye’s idea of poetic-cinéma vérité. (Though the chalkboard animation narrative bridges are pretty cool.) Brody’s specialty is long-term 'temp' assignments, this time a month of English Lit at a failing High School. Loaded with natural ability, he feigns disinterest even as the class starts seeing thru the facade. And they should be wary watching their other teachers sink into bored routine. (And what a faculty: Marcia Gay Harden, James Caan, Christina Hendricks, Lucy Liu et al.) But away from the school grounds, Brody’s barely baring up, dealing with a senile G’dad & a teenage hooker he’s (not quite believably) taken under wing. But there’s an arbitrary feeling to these character arcs, in and out of school. Maybe if Kaye had simply given in to the usual tropes and not pretended he was charting new territory, he could find a way into a film that wasn’t so . . . detached. Still, good in pieces; with Brody very good.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Kaye sure likes to compose shots with a block color backdrop behind his subject(s). Here, mostly RED.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: See what’s changed/what’s the same from ‘wild’ urban schools of the ‘60s in UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE/’67 which lost much of its charm without its epistolary format, but found other things that worked. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/07/up-down-staircase-1967.html
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