Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, Ltd.

Archive for October, 2010

• So, apparently one of my Google accounts was accessed from China. Apologies if anyone got any obviously spam emails from me. #
• But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market places, who call out to the other children, and say: #
• ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.' #

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Jen and I recently had a bit of a Netflix movie marathon which included Donnie Darko (starring Jake Gyllenhaal), Neverwas (starring Andrew Eckhart, Britney Murphy, and Ian McKellan) and Killer Klowns From Outer Space (starring almost no one of note). Of each of these movies, Brick (with Joseph Gordon-Levitt) was the most interesting because I didn’t know what to expect.

Essentially, the film exposes the inherent absurdity of teenage cliques by using the motifs of film noir.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character, Brendon, is a loner existing outside of the cliques of high school (shown by his eating lunch by himself behind a building).  His old girlfriend, Emily, contacts him after two months stating that she’s in trouble and needs his help, and thus Brendan is drawn into the underground world of high school as he tracks down where Emily has gone.

Many movies that deal with high school cliques and drugs approach the subject seriously, but there is also a tradition of movies that take a more surreal and ironic view, such as Heathers.  The humor in Brick works on a different level than that in other teen movies, such as Mean Girls. While funny, movies like Mean Girls stay firmly in mainstream Hollywood.  A big part of what makes Brick work for me is that it couches everything in film noir tropes.

Film noir is perhaps the best example of adult taking everything super seriously.  Even when it presents you with something that would be ridiculous in real life, film noir doesn’t blink.  In many ways it’s similar to melodrama.  For melodrama to work, the creators have to go all the way with it, and the same is true with film noir.  If at any point the creators let up, if reality intrudes too much in the story, the suspension of disbelief is broken everything else the film does is discredited.  I’m not an expert of film noir, Brick maintains its film noir trappings all the way to the end.  While I laughed often throughout the film (Lukas Haas’s character, the Pin, was often the subject of my laughter), the film never laughs at itself.

In this way, translating this genre to high school was perfect.  High schoolers are notorious for taking everything so seriously; the littlest thing can be “the end of the world.”  Sometimes this does result in real-life tragedy, but the majority of the time we make it through all of the world-ending cataclysms to become adults.

That’s not to say that serious things don’t happen in this film.  At the beginning of the film, Brendan is staring at Emily’s dead body (much of the film is told in flashback, utilizing another film noir trope), and just like in any film noir story, other people die; the actions of the characters always have consequences.  But the point is not a morality tale, and in many ways that’s why Brick works.  The film deals with its issues, exposes the absurdity of high-school relationships and the dangers of drugs, while not preaching at the audience.  I’m not saying this would be an effective deterrent, that showing this film to teenagers would somehow give them the realization that doing drugs and treating each like crap is a bad idea, but that’s not (and shouldn’t be) its purpose.  Only real relationships, not movies, video games, tv, or music, can do that.  And maybe that’s the point.  While I know that anyone familiar with film noir will get something out of this, for those of us that deal with teenagers all day, this film resonates in weird and interesting ways that make it very good.