There’s plenty superfluous commentary in Detachment, most of it delivered via the protagonist’s narrated monologues. We get a classroom lecture on the virtues of reading and the perils of an image-obsessed culture (which makes the image-obsessed Tony Kaye something of a hypocrite); we get cobweb-ridden life lessons such as “the world is a confusing place” and “everyone has chaos.” And in case we can’t tell that the entire