Disconnect is a 2012 drama film directed by Henry Alex Rubin. It stars Jason Bateman, Hope Davis, Frank Grillo, Andrea Riseborough, Paula Patton, Michael Nyqvist, Alexander Skarsgard, and Max Thieriot.[1] The movie also marks the acting debut of fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
People struggle to connect using modern technology. An up and coming reporter hopes her interview with an underage chatroom worker will be her big break. A teenager faces the consequences of cyber bullying. A couple who recently lost their child struggle after their identities are stolen online.
It’s a given at film festivals as much as in multiplexes these days that despite switch-off-your-cell-phone announcements and the occasional grumbling protest, whatever’s onscreen will have to compete with tiny pockets of light from audience members unable to stay off their handhelds. Watching those glow patches come and go during Disconnect reinforces the film’s position on how desensitized we’ve become to these technological intrusions. Not that Henry-Alex Rubin’s schematic multistrand drama is at all shy about articulating its themes.
Directing his first narrative feature, documentary maker Rubin (Murderball) has assembled a solid cast and weaves together the three interconnected stories of Andrew Stern’s original screenplay with elegance and efficiency. But this is a film that voices its warning about the hazards of a wired existence with solemn self-importance. It’s also quite late in the day to be pointing out that we’re so plugged into our devices we often fail to see or hear the people closest to us.
That’s not to say Disconnect is without powerful scenes, and a thread about the heedless consequences of cyber pranks among kids on social network sites probably stands to reach more adolescents than non-fiction treatments of bullying.
