BTW...about Brick...
Why does everyone think this movie is such a masterpiece? It's like someone woke up one day and said, Waaah, I wanna make a Noir film. Too bad all I have is these teenagers in 2006...wait a minute, that's it! and then proceeded to take said teenagers and make arrogant attempt to copy noir's one-of-a-kind style.
Noir is known for the dark. The use of dark and light is a key feature in these films; characters exist in the dark with their dark souls, hiding in the shadows from whatever they're hiding from, and beam of light at the right moment reveals secrets, intentions, deceits.
Brick borrows the use of dark for a few intense scenes, but it's so intentional that it takes away from the action. It works like a gimmick instead of an art.
The quick, smart, hard-boiled banter of Noir is engaging, strange, exciting. It moves the film at a strange pace, reveals tension amongst characters, sometimes even plants clues and foreshadows intentions through the words chosen by the character.
Brick uses the same model for dialogue, with Modern Day Teenagers. In High School. I never knew one kid who could use language so proficiently, let alone a whole high school full of them. Even the thugs in the movie are adept. Granted, intellegent men and women in the 1930s and 40s probably didn't talk like that either, but the language helped Drive these films, it pushed them along. In Brick it came out awkward, thin,and meaningless. Instead of revealing something about the characters that makes them sympathetic, it distanced me from them, I was uninvolved and even completely unclear about the motives and what was driving the character I was supposed to be rooting for.
Noir has style. Impeccably dressed characters walk around in enormous parlor rooms with crystal glasses of brandy. It works the other way too; the gritty feeling of a cheap apartment, a single oscillating fan and sweat stains, you can imagine what that feels like. What your character feels like. It adds tension. The style is there to support the characters and their actions.
Brick tried to use the same style to cover up the fact that plot has a complete lack of substance. The style is just that, a style. It reveals nothing about anyone and isn't even that good. I mean, a smart and sylish girl portrayed always wearing a beret and a thin scarf? Really clever, guys. Way to be imaginitive.
(From Filmsite.org) The criminal, violent, misogynistic, hard-boiled, or greedy perspectives of anti-heroes in film Noir were a metaphoric symptom of society's evils, with a strong undercurrent of moral conflict, purposelessness and sense of injustice.
Brick instead of a metaphor for society's evils, is more a metaphor for an art student attempting a class assignment to copy a Van Gogh or a Renoir. Like that stumbling wannabe artist, it tries to copy the style and mood of Noir, but without a strong story and strong characters without which Noir itself would fail, the style falls flat and the gumshoeing of Joseph Gordon Levitt (who I do think is a good actor) becomes incredibly tedious.
I love the idea of a modern day Noir, but jesus, can't someone do better than a lame exercise in style?
A agree with most of your analysis. I thought the use of the high school environment and the protagonist's young age was a useless conceit that added nothing to the story. It was engaging, however, and certainly better than likely 90% of what's in theaters on any given day.
In addition, Nora Zehetner is pretty hot.