Alternate Takes 06.20.09: Brick

Posted by Shawn S. Lealos on 06.20.2009

The Brothers Bloom has completed its release schedule and is now playing in theaters across the country. This week, Alternate Takes looks at director Rian Johnson's first movie, the high school Film Noir, Brick.



Welcome to Week 57 of Alternate Takes, my name is Shawn S. Lealos and you have entered my world.

Continuing with the recent trends, there are four releases this week that I see worth mentioning. The first mainstream release is Year One, and while the commercials look a bit stupid, it is the return of a comedic icon, director Harold Ramis. Most people know Ramis from his role on Ghostbusters, which finally got its Blu-Ray release this past week. Since he is directing this Michael Cera/Jack Black comedy vehicle, I would rather point you in the direction of his masterpiece behind the camera, Bill Murray's Groundhog Day. The other major release this week is chick flick The Proposal, starring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. Reynolds' involvement is the only reason I would want to see this movie. On the limited front, we get the release of the new Woody Allen film Whatever Works. The trailer for this film really has me interested in a Woody Allen release for the first time since - ever. It looks like Allen's fantastic Annie Hall, except with Curb Your Enthusiasm's Larry David playing the Woody Allen role. It could be really funny. Finally, I want to point you in the direction of a movie that looks so bad, it's got to be great. Dead Snow promises Nazi Zombies. I really shouldn't have to say anything else to perk most of your interests.



This week, I'm going to do things a little differently. Instead of giving you an Alternate Take of a movie that hit theaters this weekend, I'm going to point you in the direction of a movie that is still being screened across the country, getting very little publicity and deserves all your attention. The Brothers Bloom is a con-movie starring Adrian Brody and Mark Ruffalo as brothers, swindling millionaires with complex scenarios of intrigue. Bloom wants out but this brother convinces him to score one last con, this time on an eccentric heiress (Rachel Weisz) looking for adventure. It is directed by Rian Johnson, a man who is quickly becoming the "next Wes Anderson." The Brothers Bloom is still showing in many cities across the country, and I implore you to seek it out and see what all the fuss is about.




In 2006, a little movie caught my attention and introduced me to one of the most inventive directors to come along in years. I would compare this experience to when I first saw Donnie Darko and became excited about what Richard Kelly would do next. Of course, Kelly hit that sophomore jinx and polarized audiences with his difficult Southland Tales. The director I discovered in 2006 has not suffered that sophomore jinx and his second movie, The Brothers Bloom, is not only a great film, but also a step up from his amazing debut feature. His name is Rian Johnson and his debut film was Brick.

Rian Johnson was born in Maryland on December 17, 1973. He was raised in San Clemente, California and attended the University of Southern California, graduating from the USC School of Cinematic Arts in 1996.

In 1997, Johnson wrote a script called Brick and spent the next six years trying to get the project off the ground. It was a difficult period because Johnson was a first time director and the script was not an easy sell. Because of its strange subject matter, he ended up borrowing the money from friends and family and shot it independently for $500,000. Brick was accepted into Sundance where it was then picked up by Focus Features.

What made the film so difficult a sell was it being highly influenced by Dashiell Hammett's novels, including the Maltese Falcon, Red Harvest and The Glass Key. The twist of the story is the entire hardboiled detective being transplanted into an American high school. While this seems to be the basis for a spoof or, at the worst, a ridiculous premise for a movie, Johnson pulls it off with a panache Hammett was best known for.

"[Hammett] did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all," Raymond Chandler wrote in his essay, The Simple Art of Murder. "He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before."

By the time I finished watching Brick, I knew for a fact this was something I had never seen before.

**

"The original inspiration came from Dashiell Hammett's novels," Johnson said. "The world of those books struck me as so amazingly vibrant, scary, funny, intriguing, you name it... so I decided I wanted to take a crack at an American detective movie. The decision to set it in high school was, initially at least, just to give it a different set of visual cues, so you couldn't just take a glimpse at guys in hats and shadowy alleyways and switch your brain into ‘I know what this is' autopilot mode. I wanted people to experience the genre in an unexpected way. After I started working on it, though, it became much more than that for me, and in many ways became about the emotional experience of being a teenager."

Johnson was turned onto Hammett thanks to another movie owing a great deal to the American pulp fiction master, Miller's Crossing.

Miller's Crossing is the 1990 Coen brothers' film centering on a gangster named Tom (Gabriel Byrne) caught between two rival mob bosses (Albert Finney and Jon Polito). It has all the rifts of the old pulp detective novels and the Coen's admitted they were highly influenced by Hammett's The Glass Key while writing their film. Upon hearing this, Johnson became enamored with the writing of Hammett and started work on Brick.

The opening scene invites us to the world of the hardboiled detective story. We see our hero Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) kneeling in a ditch, staring at a dead girl lying face down in the water. There is no dialogue and it is clear that the story we are about to see is going to reveal who the dead girl is, who Brendan is and their connection to one another.

The film jumps back in time ("Two Days Previous") and we see a high school, with Brendan as a student. On the DVDs commentary track, Johnson says he chose to make it in a high school to give it different visual cues people have not seen before. While his favorite genre is Film Noir, he didn't want to use the same visuals as films like The Maltese Falcon or Chinatown, with men in hats, shadowy alleyways, dames and cigarettes. He was worried using those visual cues would cause audiences to turn off their brains because those staples have been used so much they have become parody.

The film quickly moves forward with Brendan getting a call from Em (Emilie de Ravin) and becoming worried she may be getting involved in something bad. The first pitfall Johnson needed to jump was in introducing the Sam Spade styled character of the story. Brendan has to be someone you can believe in this very hard role and Johnson could not have picked a better actor than Joseph Gordon-Levitt. People who only know Gordon-Levitt from his television role on 3rd Rock from the Sun need to see him in this film and his previous role in Mysterious Skin. He impresses me as a young actor on the rise, someone who could take the same roles Shia LaBeouf has been gifted with, and become a huge star in his own right. He plays the role of Brendan with an introverted pain, a fear of the unknown and a lost soul that sucks you into the story from the start. It is his movie to lose, but he never drops the ball and carries it on his able shoulders with great aplomb.

When he approaches his only friend, The Brain (Matt O'Leary), we get the first glimpse at the dialogue that lives in this movie world. Instead of stumbling over the strange words and slang terms, both Gordon-Levitt and O'Leary seamlessly exchange the flow of dialogue in a manner that doesn't scream gimmick, but instead sounds like two old friends, so familiar with one another they have developed a dialogue unique to them. You hear terms you may not be familiar with (stats, patch up, cream on the upper crust, drama vamp) but you automatically know what they are talking about. This is a technique that borrows heavily from old pulp novels, playing off the language.

In lesser hands this could have destroyed the film. On the surface, it seems like you would be watching some kids and twenty-something's spouting a language more appropriate for Humphrey Bogart. Instead of a kid feeling world weary at such a young age, it would appear as if they were playing grown-up and that would have killed this film dead in its tracks. Another problem is that using the language too much would make it overpower the story, making it a gimmick film, style over substance. Johnson dodged both of those worries with his handling of the actors and the actual wording of the dialogue. It is a testament to both the written word and the performances by the young, talented actors.

Despite the determination not to use the visual cues of the Film Noir, the character types of the genre are still present in this movie. Brendan is the Sam Spade character determined to find the answers to what happened to his girl while crossing dames, such as the "Drama Vamp" Kara (Meagan Good), Femme fatale Laura (Nora Zehetner), violent thug Tug (Noah Fleiss) and, eventually, a drug lord known as The Pin (Lukas Haas), all individuals existing in the hierarchy of the high school itself. Replacing the police officials who always show up in the pulp novels to hassle our heroes, the high school authority figures enter in the form of the assistant vice-principal (Richard Roundtree) who forces Brendan to become an informant for the school. Have no doubt, this is a Film Noir and it takes its subject matter very seriously.

"Once I started actually writing, it was really amazing how all the archetypes from that detective world slid perfectly over the high school types," Johnson explains. "And high school is one of those rare things where the types that you generally see out there do typically exist in actual high experience – at least in my high school experience, like the drama vamp. There was always some queen bee who ruled the back of the theater."

When you get past the Film Noir elements, the plot is a very similar one to what thousands of kids go through every day. Brendan loves Em but she has gotten involved in some bad shit, mostly involving drugs. The few times we see Em and Brendan communicate, it is obvious Em is wasted and drifting further and further into addiction. Brendan sees this and wants to help her clean herself up and get her away from the bad influences surrounding her. It is, tragically, a losing battle in this case. Em is a girl that may have originally begun hanging around with this crowd for fun but, because she continues feeding her addictions, she is unable to get out before it consumes her.

When Brendan finds her dead body, he starts his one-man investigation into what led to her death, leading through double crosses and twists until he finally finds the person responsible for her death. He knows he should walk away but as The Brain tells him, "you're thick Brendan." What makes his journey so great is it is clear he is not stupid. Brendan knows the rules of the Film Noir. He knows the femme fatale is a player and if he follows her, he is a sap. This character stands alongside Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, written with great care to not only pay homage to the greats but also stand beside them as a modern day equal.

While this is the same story of the relentless and resourceful gumshoe you remember from the novels, Johnson takes great care not to create a satire. These are kids live the life of adults from classical crime fiction but are still kids. There are a number of scenes that make this abundantly clear, adding much needed humor to the dour proceedings. Brendan always talks about who is eating with who, meaning lunch period, a sign of power in the high school power structure.



One of the best scenes in the movie takes place at the home of The Pin. This character is feared and very scary, spoke of in hushed tones by those who know he is the main supplier of drugs to the high school youth. However, when Brendan approaches The Pin at his house, there are numerous minions in the hall outside of his room, like he was The Godfather. Everything seems dangerous and ominous until they go upstairs and we meet The Pin's mom. As The Pin sits at the table staring down Brendan, his mom is fixing our hero breakfast. Tug sits in the background staring intensely, but the intensity is under minded by the cookie sitting in front of The Pin and a Rooster tea pitcher in the corner forefront of the screen.

The scene adds a touch of humanity to the proceedings while never letting us forget that amidst all the violence and danger, these are still kids.

"We were obviously aware that there was such a rich tradition [in Film Noir]," Johnson said, "but kind of our golden mean, was, OK, if we were just handed this script, what are the creative choices we would make to bring it to the screen? That was important for everybody and I think especially maybe for the actors in freeing them up to feel like they weren't just doing types from older movies. That they could approach their [characters] and make them fresh."

**

Brick premiered in the United States on April 7, 2006 in two theaters and was released internationally across Europe, including a limited released in the UK on May 12, 2006. The film grossed $2.07 million in North America and $3.9 million worldwide. Thanks to the film's success, Johnson was able to remain independent with his second film project, The Brothers Bloom.

"I just really don't have any interest right now in doing studio work or being a director for hire or doing other people's material or selling my material for other people to do," Johnson said. "Right now I've got a couple of stories in my head and I want to be able to tell them in my own way. I want to be able to make my own movies. Maybe down the line that can happen with a studio, but right now it seems like it would be more difficult. Staying indie and staying indie for the time being makes sense. I look at the filmmakers whose career trajectories I really admire - you look at the Coen Brothers or Paul Thomas Anderson or Aronofsky and you see these people who have made their own stuff and be able to stay true to that. They all stay relatively small; that seems to be part of the equation. I'm completely thrilled to do that."

Despite the independent structure, IMDb lists The Brothers Bloom budget at $20 million, 36 times the budget of Brick. This will make it more difficult for his sophomore effort to reach the financial level of success of his debut feature, but it is already achieving a critical level of success rivaling Brick. He once again took his major influences from crime flicks, this time con man flicks such as The Sting and House of Games.

"Paper Moon is probably the closest to a direct influence," Johnson said. "I love The Sting and House of Games, but Paper Moon was really the first thing I watched that took more of a fairy-tale approach and was more relationship based. Other than that, God, take your pick."

Below, I present you with the first seven minutes of The Brothers Bloom. I also encourage you to search out a theater showing the movie and give it your support.

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