“Lunch is a lot of things. Lunch is difficult.”
Hello, and welcome to the first installment of
Damning with Faint Praise.
We’re going to talk about horrible movies and how they could be better, but I’m going to start with a great movie,
Brick (2006), and a lot of cool things about it.
Synopsis
“Throw one at me if you want, hash-head. I got all five senses
and I slept last night. That puts me six up on the lot of you.”
Emily calls her former boyfriend, Brendan, while hysterical and terrified. Brendan, a tough-talking outsider, dives into the elaborate ranks of his high-school social scene in search of Emily, unable to shake the call or the cryptic things Emily said. Two days later, he finds Emily dead, outside a remote drainage ditch. Brendan confronts high-school jocks and drug-dealers alike with a near-suicidal determination to get justice for the girl who left him.
Verdict
A terrific high school noir detective movie that’s well worth your time.
“Deal with whatever this ain’t about and drop it.”
Brick was filmed in 2005, on an estimated budget of US $475,000 which writer/director Rian Johnson borrowed from friends and family over six years. Released in April, 2006 and distributed by Focus Features, this gritty high-school detective film disappointed on its opening weekend $83754. Two months later, though, word-of-mouth boosted it over US $2 million.
Today, it’s 79% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes where 82% of the audience report liking it.
“Brendan, I know you're mad at these people because you think I
went away from you and went to them but, you need to start
seeing it as my decision. Stop getting angry because where I
want to be at, is different from where you want to be at.”
Rian Johnson loved
Miller’s Crossing while he was in film school, and that led him to the hard-boild detective fiction of
Dashiell Hammett. He decided to make his own film noir, and set it in his own high school and hometown to inject the genre with fresh visual cues. It was Rian Johnson’s first full-length feature (his second was
The Brothers Bloom, and his third,
Looper, is in post-production). Not a guy with a lot of work under his belt.
Brick stars one of my favorite actors, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Brendan;
3rd Rock from the Sun, (500) Days of Summer, G.I.Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Hesher, Inception, 50/50).
Supporting roles include Lukas Haas (Pin), Richard Roundtree (Assistant VP Trueman, can you dig it?), and Emilie de Ravin (Emily; she’d actually filmed her scenes before
Lost aired).
You might recognize Nora Zehetner (Laura) from her 9-episode role as Eden McCain on
Heroes or her work in
Everwood.
Lessons
“There’s a thesaurus in the library. ‘Yeah’ is under Y. Go ahead. I’ll wait.”
Brick raises a lot of issues around independent film-making. Rian Johnson spent six years gathering money and preparing to film, and that paid off during filming. He could take advantage of every moment of his limited filming time.
Because he paid for the film without studio involvement, we get a fresh, well thought-out, intelligent film with a highly stylized language. We also have to wonder, is
Brick independent because it’s so smart, or is it purposely obscure? In the DVD commentary, producer Ram Bergman talks about turning away Focus Features, telling them that
Brick would never succeed in theaters, that it was strictly a festival & art house film.
Obviously, this was never going to get major studio backing at SXSW. Rian Johnson had never written or directed a full-length feature before (he’d been a camera operator and an editor).
None of its young stars was famous at the time. Joseph Gordon-Levitt hadn’t achieved the recognition as an adult actor that he would get from
Mysterious Skin.
Lost hadn’t put Emilie de Ravin on the map yet. Nora Zehetner hadn’t made the jump from TV to film.
To big studios,
Brick was going to look like a risk.
To that, you have to add that it’s an homage to film noir set in a high school.
Film school students love film noir, but it hasn’t been popular on big screens for fifty or sixty years. High school movies are supposed to be raunchy comedies (everything from
Porky’s to
American Pie) or light-hearted message movies (pretty much every movie John Hughes ever made). Doing something dark, complex, and stylized wasn’t an obvious sell.
“I don't want you to come kicking in my home-
room door because of something I didn't do. “
One of the things that I love about
Brick is how character driven it is.
Flashback scenes show a more open, innocent, Brendan. We know that because he doesn’t wear his jacket and brushes his hair back off his forehead. In the contemporary scenes, Brendan is cut-off, isolated, and out for himself. Emily is his link to that earlier time, and his love for her drives him through the movie.
I really appreciated that the script allows Brendan to show fear and loss.
His fear accentuates his determination to get justice for Emily. His loss accentuates his love for her. The pain he suffers shows not only his humanity, but how much he values Emily and their relationship – even though they’ve broken up. He may be a loner and a small-time dealer who ratted out his partner, but he’s also a romantic trying to overcome his own past.
Brick doesn’t spend any time giving us character revealing scenes. It dives right into the story and depends on dialogue and action to reveal character.
“See the Pin pipes it from the lowest scraper for Brad Bramish to sell, maybe. Ask any dope rat where their junk sprang and they'll say they scraped it from that, who scored it from this, who bought it off so, and after four or five connections the list always ends with The Pin. But I bet you, if you got every rat in town together and said ‘Show your hands’ if any of them've actually seen The Pin, you'd get a crowd of full pockets.“
Brick has a profoundly pre-feminist, film noir attitude toward women. Nora Zehetner says, in the DVD commentary, that she was on set with Emilie de Ravin for a few hours, and never met Meagan Good (Kara). None of the three female characters have scenes together.
In fact, all three of the women are trying to figure out their own power.
Emily breaks up with Brendan when she realizes that she’s just the girlfriend of a popular boy. She wants her own identity, and it gets her killed.
Kara can’t be happy or safe unless she’s in control of the men in her life. Her power lies only in her sexuality and skill with manipulation. Even when she controls the men around her, she knows that’s only borrowed power.
By the way, when you watch, check out Kara’s costume changes. Each one signals the role that she’s trying to play in her life.
Laura wants to be on top. She wants to be the one in charge. She starts her drive by dating Brad Bramish (Brian White), the top jock of the school (or so he claims, even though the coach never puts him in). Brad turns out to be a sap, but he links Laura to the Pin, a legendary drug dealer. The Pin has real power, and money, and Laura wants both.
Of course, high school is a time when everyone, regardless of genre, is trying to figure themselves out and figure out their power.
“I was just going to come up with some bit of information,
or set up some phony deal. And I think she'd let me walk.
Then I was going to go to the vice principal and spill
the street address of the biggest dope port in the burg.”
Directorially, Brick betrays Rian Johnson’s inexperience in a few places – but not as many as you might think.
For example, early in Brendan’s search for Emily, Mr. Johnson makes extensive use of people entering scenes in the background, often seen in reflections. This evokes Brendan’s lack of clarity and understanding at that point in the film. Mr. Johnson handles it deftly. I watched the movie several times before I noticed how he was communicating Brendan’s lack of understanding.
Rian Johnson uses some inexpensive tricks with camera angles, film speed, and even film direction, to accomplish his effects under his budget. He goes into great detail about them in the DVD commentary (while joking that he’s teaching the listener how to make Brick at home). They look terrific, and add greatly to the impact of the scenes in which they appear.
A lesson for filmmakers here is that you have to match what you show with what you can afford, or what you can pull-off.
If you lack the chops or the funds to film something, let it happen off-screen. In Brick, we hear a big gang brawl happen upstairs in Pin’s house, but Mr. Johnson doesn’t spend time or money filming it.
“I don’t like being told which side I’m on.”
There are several jarring quick cuts in the film. Some of them are there because test audiences had trouble following the story. Mr. Johnson went back and cut in some close-ups and inserts to clarify clues and plot points.
However, there are some cuts during length dialogue scenes that reflect a lack of confidence. Good actors (and Mr. Johnson cast some) should be able to hold our interest throughout dialogue. Switching camera angles and inserting close-ups can underscore drama, but here it mostly shows a lack of confidence in the performers.
Brick’s language is highly stylized on purpose. Mr. Johnson says, in the DVD commentary, that he wasn’t trying to create a realistic depiction of high school. Stylizing the language was both a pointer towards the visually stylized film noir genre, and an attempt to evoke the intensity of emotion that pervades high school years. Those years feel like the most important ones of your life, when you’re in them. It’s a bubble of time when everything can feel like life and death.
Brick feels like real high school, even though it sounds nothing like it.
A theme that runs through
Brick is imperfection.
Brendan wears glasses, and so does Brain. Dode and Emily, among others, are addicts. The Pin walks with a cane. Tug clearly has anger management issues exacerbated by his drug use. The more perfect anyone appears, the more you can be sure that some imperfection lurks behind their facades.
Closing
There are plenty of ambitious filmmakers out there who can't get their vision on film.
That said, the minor flaws in Brick show Rian Johnson's potential, rather than his lack of film-making savvy.
This is a lesson in how to do things right.