Brick (2005)

Brick (2005) is a modern film noir (a neo-noir?) and the feature-length directorial debut of Rian Johnson. The plot is very noir (girl goes missing, scorned ex-lover goes searching, secrets are uncovered, betrayals are revealed, venegance is wrought). Johnson's twist is to set the classic story in the world of a privledged California high school. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the scruffy, mumbling Phillipe Marlowe who goes looking for his missing (and, naturally, troubled and doomed) ex-girlfriend, played by Emilie de Ravin (hey, it's Claire). What he uncovers is a web of crime, corruption, and seduction, mapped cleverly to elements of the high school world: the principal's office, the drama club, the mean girl, the jock, the fight in the parking lot.

I'll admit, in the beginning, I was a little distracted by the whole conceit. These are kids playing in a very adult genre. Nora Zehetner, in particular, although gorgeous, seemed a little too young to pull off the femme fatal. But maybe that was the point. These worlds, seemingly disparate, do in fact share many similarities in their doomed and disillusioned characters, the anti-hero, the missing girl, the femme fatal, the crazed lover. The isolation and turmoil in both settings is also remarkably similar; and, as the movie twists and turns, you begin to suspend disbelief and appreciate the wry, dark humor Johnson has created in the midst of a rather realistic mystery/thriller.

Gordon Levitt pulls off the smooth-talking gumshoe role, all while staring mostly at his feet. Lukas Haas was a real treat as The Pin - the local drug lord who is "really old, like 26" and who runs his crime ring out of his parents wood-panelled basement. The Pin's mom serving juice and cookies while the two characters square off only serves to underscore the tough guy/innocuous setting dichotomy, but without any sense of irony or satire. The cast (and/or the director) crafts a perfectly straight performance that feels even darker and funnier for its sincerity. After Desmond beats up the Pin's thug, he warns him: "Tell Emily I want to see her; she knows where I eat lunch."

Next up for Johnson is The Brothers Bloom, staring Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo. Steve Yedlin has served as DP on both of Johnson's films. The hazy, grey, muted world of the high school and town is a perfect for the shadowy world of the noir. The soundtrack is nicely atmospheric, spooky, sparse. I was particularly fond of a chase scene with the every increasing sound of shoes pounding on the sidewalk. The film hits sharply on the central notion of noir, true I suppose in high school as well: isolation, aloneness, absurdity.