Detachment

Detachment (2011) is Tony Kaye's drama you can watch online on iFILM. Henry Barthes drifts between schools as a substitute teacher and never stays long enough to get attached — that distance is how he survives. Adrien Brody plays a man who guards himself with quiet detachment.

His latest posting drops him into a failing public school where students lash out at staff and the teachers themselves are running on empty. Henry plans to clock his three weeks and leave, but people keep pulling him in: a teenage girl off the streets, a withdrawn student with a camera, colleagues coming apart. The cast includes Marcia Gay Harden, Christina Hendricks, Lucy Liu, James Caan and Bryan Cranston.

Kaye shoots in fragments — handheld footage, talking-head confessions, chalk drawings, scratchy home video — building a raw portrait of a school system and a man afraid to feel anything. It's a heavy, unflinching look at burnout and the urge to reach someone. Stream Detachment (2011) online on iFILM.