BRICK

I highly reccomend checking out the movie BRICK. Kevin and I saw it the other night. There will be spoilers ahead, so be warned...

The movie, a film noir set in high school, captures the feeling of secondary school. Everything is life and death. Adults barely rate and if they do, they are stooges or antagonists. Some say that its nothing but style, but I disagree. By handing the teenaged characters adult-scale issues to deal with, the film blurs the line of adolescence. Is there an adolescence in a world so complicated? What does it mean to be grown-up? The main character takes on a responsibility to seek out the what has happened to his friend, his love. He is faced with mortality and morality. And we, as the audience, are given what seems to be a neat package nicely wrapped that eventually spins out of control with violence and betrayal. The ground is shifting at every step and even at the end, we can only guess who has the last word. Or, to be precise, what the last word is.

It troubles me though that the ultimate victim, the object of the hunt, the fight, and so on, is a young girl. She is blond and waifish, fragile in her flowing skirt and oversized sweater. The conflict is played out over her body, inside her body, as the men fight to claim her heart, her allegiance, the promise held within her. In the end, they fight for memories. She's dead. They show us that right off the top.

Maybe the film is about rewriting history. There is certainly a strong flavour of regret — how one's actions can spiral out of control and down a pathway where you can lose everything.

What I wonder is what happens the day after the movie is over. Do they all just go back to school? Eating lunch and skipping home room? Or has something changed irrevocably? Certainly the boy has become a man, but I suspect he was already was from the first shot of him contemplating her body face down in the gutter.

Formless thoughts. But an interesting movie. Funny. Very very funny.