"Detachment": Who Has the Right to Greater Sorrow? Spoilers

Before talking about the film, I recall a scene where two girls are chatting. Girl A mentions a visit to her younger cousin who has just graduated from primary school. The cousin is smart and lively, from a wealthy family, seemingly having everything, and living comfortably. However, due to her parents' busy work schedule, they plan to send her to a boarding school for middle school. The usually docile cousin suddenly throws a tantrum, crying and sulking alone in her room. From outside the room, Girl A thinks to herself, "Come on, it's just this little thing. There are so many people in the world worse off than you, and yet you live so comfortably." Girl B agrees, feeling the child is unreasonably spoiled for her outburst.

Regardless of whether the cousin is indeed suffering from 'princess syndrome', I discern from the girls' conversation the implication that sadness and pain are comparative.

This mindset is all too familiar. Those with a broken hand might think that a cut finger is trivial; someone with a terminal illness might think that someone under mental stress has no right to complain; the former will always deem the latter as making a mountain out of a molehill. It's like how older people can’t help but mock the young for their seemingly insignificant troubles.

Because of this, "sadness" is an emotion that's incredibly difficult to express.

If not handled delicately, instead of sympathy, it might invite ridicule. Yet "Detachment" is a film that perfectly embodies the emotion of "sadness", and through the empathetic experience of viewing, it awakens deeper, hidden doubts and thoughts within us.

The story is not complex; in fact, it lacks a unified, complete plot. Its narrative style remains the usual, observing the surrounding environment from one person's perspective. This person is Henry, and those environments are a school filled with troubled students and failing teachers, their lethargic bodies housing twisted, pained hearts and souls that have completely lost passion and color for life.

But do we have the right to ridicule their disappointment and despair? Can we arrogantly tell these failures from a successful person's point of view, "It's all your fault, you made your life a mess"?

Henry never appears as a savior among these troubled youths. He's not trying to win the students' trust with his sincerity to ultimately transform them into people accepted by mainstream society. Such sincerity would undoubtedly be tainted with false self-righteousness. And Henry himself never intends to be a transformation expert. He refuses to be a permanent teacher, instead, substituting at different schools. According to his own words, he fears establishing long-term stable relationships. He is a person with serious psychological issues. But it's precisely such scars that make him inherently understand how to treat those children. He is just like them; he doesn't need to feign a smile and say, "I understand your sadness."

He presents us with a world from his perspective. Can we mock the anguish of a fat girl who feels inferior due to her parents' ridicule? Can we label her a failure for refusing to draw what people expect to see using her talent? Or, can we blame a young prostitute for her fate due to her indiscretion? And for a female teacher who eventually cannot suppress her sense of failure and cries out loud, can we indifferently say, "Why do you care about others? It's none of your business!"? What about the many more failures in the story, those abandoned by mainstream society? Can we, with our numerical strength and supreme power of discourse, criticize and ultimately declare them deserving of their fate without sympathy?

There's nothing more presumptuous than casually judging a person, especially judging "sadness."

That's why Kaye is so clever. He avoids the traditional story model—affirming some characters' nature through "reform" or punishing others' cowardice with "death." He doesn't judge; he simply expresses emotion. In a screen dominated by shades of gray, various characters speak with a tone of helplessness and despair. They even regard individual deaths with indifference. And all of this fits perfectly, naturally.

It's this surface calm that awakens the purest compassion and fear in everyone's heart.

People don't always have to compete, and the same goes for "sadness." It doesn't need comparison. Such an intensely private emotion doesn't need preaching or judgment; it just wants to be treated alone and seeks to be vented. After all, any of us could find ourselves in such a situation. Insignificant to others, yet unbearable to oneself. Like the little cousin at the beginning, perhaps she doesn't want to say, "I'm sadder than others," she's just expressing, "I am very sad."