Brick Is Solid Experiment in Film Genre, Lukas Haas

Rian Johnson, 2005

Duh, I am so slow getting on this Brickwagon, I know. Everyone told me to watch it when it was in theaters but I was probably being one of three things: 1. obstinate for no reason (it happens) 2. broke or 3. otherwise engaged when everybody else I know went to see it.* So, because I'm woefully behind the times, Brick is going to fall into my "put it on your queue" category.

Brick is a perfect reconstruction of a classic film noir, it just happens to take place in what appears to be the late 1980s. In a high school. Writer/director Rian Johnson didn't really do what no one else has done before with his little film; millions of thespians and filmmakers alike have been showing off the adaptability of the classics for decades, reenacting Shakespeare works like Othello, Hamlet, and MacBeth (click on that link and rent that movie, dammit) in different times and settings. Hell, James Joyce started working on a modern day Odyssey 85 years before the Coen brothers released O Brother, Where Art Thou? in 2000.

Johnson's recreation of the very specific and practically extinct genre of film noir deserves its acclaim, however. Other underheralded gems have paid tribute to film genres of the past, but very few have been able to do it without incorporating a fair amount of tongue-in-cheekness, and I can't think of one other that lifts the characteristics of a film genre out of time to see if the film still works during a different period with different types of people in a different social circle.

I feel bad saying this, since I did really really like the film, but I kinda believe that genres like film noir die for a reason. The key features of a noir film are a hard-boiled and cynical protagonist (Brendan, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) moving around a stark, contrasty landscape which he or she (usually "he") perceives to be inherently dangerous. Most females are femme fatales (Laura, played by Nora Zehetner), who often know more than the protagonist does and are ambivalent about choosing sides. You know what I'm talking about. A fast-paced script with lots of vocab that you assume is "industry jargon" (by "industry" I mean usually some sort of detective-type industry). Often a murder or a conspiracy to commit murder is involved, and although justice is served at the end of the film (as it must be), the protagonist doesn't exactly enjoy a happy ending. Usually it's back to poverty, back to solitude, or back to just plain disliking everybody. (For a classic example of film noir, check out Double Indemnity). If Brick gets old after awhile, it's because noir films wear on you. And therefore any faithful interpretations of film noir must necessarily follow the style through until the end.**

Like I said, the updating of a genre that isn't socially applicable anymore isn't without its problems. For instance, the intelligent humor of '80s high school kids spouting out lines like "Look, I'm not heeling you to hook you" and "She knows where I eat lunch" and my favorite, "I don't want you to come kicking in my homeroom door because of something I didn't do"*** is undermined by the fact that the conflict in Brick revolves around a murder caused by a drug deal gone wrong. Lukas Haas (you know, the kid from Witness) plays an "old, maybe 26"-year-old called The Pin, who functions as the crime boss in this film, and it would have been in keeping with the rest of the film's general joke to maybe make him a pot dealer or something. Nope, the guy sells bricks of heroin! Heroin, guys, and that's not all. Was the murder that takes place in the beginning of the film due to a heroin problem? Or was it because of an unwanted pregnancy? Well! Time for Algebra!

It would be one thing if the amplified dramas of normal (or theatrical) high school life were used to take the place of the grisly business in film noir, since all of the other high school aspects line up accordingly: head cheerleader = femme fatale, guy who eats lunch by himself = loner detective, etc. Those parallels make the film funny, becoming outrightly so when The Pin's mother serves everyone Cornflakes, but it's hard to keep laughing when we keep seeing flashbacks of a corpse in a drainage ditch.

And now I've been forced to end on that same downer. So let me just go ahead and give you guys what you really want anyway:

*And I really respect people who can be solo filmgoers, but I am just not one of them. Unless it was at The Byrd. I think I could handle that.

**And yes, I realize that I'm also becoming word-weary. It's part of the whole theme. And hey, get over it!

***Be absolutely sure that you watch this film with subtitles. For that reason alone, I'm glad I waited until the DVD came out.