Adrien Brody: 5 Awesome Performances & 5 That Sucked

2. Henry Barthes - Detachment (2012)

If Ryan Gosling has Half-Nelson, Adrien Brody has Detachment. His Henry Barthes is a pro-substitute teacher - "the best sub on the call sheet" - who has been jaded by years on the job and his inability to make a difference in any of his students' lives. Director Tony Kaye (American History X) wisely sidesteps the clichéd route that so many well-to-do 'teacher movies' travel down, where one person manages to change the lives of their troubled students simply by being quirky. Henry Barthes is a man who has all but given up on trying anymore, cycling through his rhetoric just in case it does manage to actually get through to one of the kids he teaches. Brody makes the contradictory combination of fatigue and genuine consideration for these kids genuine and believable. Detachment was Brody's meatiest role since The Pianist, and the material in the film that he had to chew on - which almost verged on the melodramatic, but was played so realistically that it didn't turn out that way - included the suicide of Barthes' mother, a dying grandfather, a friendship with an underage hooker and a depressed student who's only ever minutes away from topping herself. Brody handles it all in his stride and once again proves why he won that Oscar, which was for...