She’s a brick, etc.
First, I want to apologize for referencing that godawful Ben Folds Five song in the title. Thankfully, the film I’m about to hyperbolically discuss does not (but it does play “Sister Ray” over the closing credits. Totally awesome).
I just watched Rian Johnson’s 2005 film, “Brick”. Let me just that it is totally awesome (could I make a movie rating scale that works like that? “totally awesome,” “awesome,” “meh,” “not so awesome,” “fucking terrible”. I think this has potential). The film, in case you are not aware of it, is a film noir set in a modern, southern Californian high school. To suggest that the film is set in a high school is not to suggest that the film is something like “Bugsy Malone” (in other words, it isn’t “cute” or “obvious”). The film is also, I would suggest, not a neo-noir (at least, other than in the sense that it wasn’t made in the 1940s (of course, neither were “Touch of Evil” or “Kiss Me Deadly”)). Neo-noir seems to suggest some sort of reevaluation of noir or something of a diminished noir (since “noir” is a mood and not a genre). So, when I say that “Brick” is a noir set in a high school, I don’t mean to suggest that it deploys noir in an ironic fashion or uses it to fulfill some functional nostalgia, the film is noir. Set in a high school.
