The Donnie Darko Effect....

Here's a little something I was thinking about..............

I bought the DVD of Brick the other day. It's too good not to own.

However, I saw something which made me cringe, and almost put it back on the shelf.
And what was that?
The selling point, the slogan. The thing, infact, that the distribution company had put there to make sure I picked it up.
"The Smartest Indie Flick since Donnie Darko. You have to see it"
This was the review from Total film. I kind of agree, but why does it make me feel queasy?

I later diagnosed the problem as simply this - I don't think that every film that's slightly obscure should be linked to Donnie Darko. There are so many differences between the two.
Should we really put every film featuring teenagers by an independant filmmaker in the same mould. I thought indie films were about breaking such moulds??!!
Firstly, from a genre point of view, Brick is quintessentially a noir film, albeit with a modernist slant; whereas Donnie Darko is mixture of Brat movie (think The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller and co), high school flick, psycho thriller, and drama.

The title 'indie' has become an annoying genre. It used to just stand for 'independant' - as in independant of a large studio. Now, when a movie is called indie, we come to expect kooky, strange films with beautiful but grotesque characters, stylistic aesthetics and mise en scene,
inconcievable plots and ambiguous endings. Yes, they get to do these sorts of movies because they haven't got Universal and the like breathing down their necks about what will and won't sell (ever seen a Tom Cruise blockbuster with an imaginary friend and a peodophile? Remember that last instalment of Harry Potter, where Daniel Radcliffe looking for Emma Watson's killers?).
Though saying that, Hollywood gets their mitts on most distribution rights these days. See the book Down and Dirty Pictures, byPeter Biskind, for much more insight on this subject than I can give here :D Particularly about Sundance and Miramax's involvement in our dark and dingy cinematic underworld. His descriptions of the Weinstein brothers are alone worth buying the book!

The ideal of the independant movie, like arthouse, was to break down barriers. But now it seems to be becoming restricted and cliched in it's own right.

Even with the most amazing script, if a movie hasn't got big names attached, and isn't deemed accessible, it isn't made without a lot of the filmmakers own funding, let alone is it distributed. Notice that Donnie Darko features Noah Wyle, Drew Barrymore (who is also an
executive producer - cue the big bucks), and Patrick Swayze. Would this have been made if Drew hadn't liked the script?

Moreover, would Brick have been financed if someone up top hadn't come along and said, "Brendan huh? Reminds me of Donnie".??

Brick is a high school movie with a twist. We're dealing with only a select crowd: the crowd of druggies and their dealers, of misfits and outsiders. There are no cheerleaders, there are no celebrations of America and it's wholesome Apple Pie exterior image. It's gritty and dark and deserted. The only glimpse of the suburbs we see are darkly lit interiors, or lawns covered with leaves. This is in direct contrast to the (sometimes) eerily manicured lawns of American Surburbia (notice in one of the first scenes of Donnie Darko, when we're getting glimpses of the family, Donnie's dad is using a leaf blower on his lawn. There is no denying that the film later twists these images, but they're images that aren't even present in Brick).
The kids never take a single lesson. The campus is dark and dingy. There is no hint of setting, season - some characters are in shorts, some are in jackets.
Our main gangster is a cripple. The main action and fight scenes don't have thumping soundtracks. They have the sound of thumps in the face and blood hitting the floor.
You feel their pain because it isn't masked by cinematic sheen. Or so we are led to believe.

Brendan is our noir 'Antihero'. He doesn't really want to traipse around helping his ex. He doesn't seem to want to get involved with anything. There's a hint of Humphrey Bogart in his withdrawn and sarcastic manner, which later builds up to righteous passion and fury.
Our "Femme Fatale", Emily, spurs the action as we would expect. But she disappears early on; only to come back in twists of dark and subtle humour, to haunt our hero.

The real genius of Brick is the dialogue. We aren't listening to a translation - this is high school as Brendan and co see it, as they hear it. We don't find out what the words mean directly - we have to second guess their language. They don't want us to know, they're not interested in telling us
how hard their world is to them. Brendan doesn't lean back in bed or turn around in the shower and talk to us directly. Emily doesn't read a note to us summing up the main principles.
We are left with nothing but to watch and learn.
We don't get the plot through fancy plays with timing, with extra camera angles, with voiceovers. The only flashback and dream sequences we see are Brendan's.
We know as much information as Brendan - maybe less infact, because we're
only entering this life briefly and we don't know the people he visits or their connections until we're allowed to. We don't know the world of their high school.

This world of drugs and wars, of life and of death, is important to the film, and given so much weight because it's important to them. We're not seeing a flashback or retelling
of a story - we're watching Brendan as if it's happening Live on the News.
The humour comes in when we get glimpses of the world outside the bubble of high school - in the pins house, they have to act nice as pie infront of his mum.
She fixes these sworn enemies and 'hardline' gangsters cornflakes and apple juice. In the midst of the war talk, the armies are sitting upstairs being served milk and minding their p's and q's. Brendan can't get hold of his confidant and information source because he has had his phone confiscated during a lesson by a teacher.
Brendan stays away from school at one point, not because of running into the police, but because he has played truant and he doesn't want to be called in for detention. He has to get up early to avoid his mum.
Infact, Some of the best scenes are the incidental ones. the ones that bring us back into the real world, such as the scenes in the Pin's house with 'Mrs M'.
We the audience are spectators. It's voyeuristic, almost intrusive. And it's divine.

Going back to the mention of Mrs. M, do you see any other parents in this movie? Do you see authority figures? No. Not if Brendan doesn't want to see them. You see the world through the eyes of Brendan and his peers.
It's a fabulously written, acted, shot and directed world, and I adored every minute of it. Infact I felt emotional watching it - nostalgic for the days of high school, and moreover, saddened because I'll never write a movie that good. I'll just write about them.

However, please don't go and make another 5 Bricks. We know its good. You don't need to copy it. Come up with your own Donnie, your own Brendan, your own saga.

You don't know until you reach the top if it's worth the uphill climb.

(Images and links from Amazon.com)