If the name Rian Johnson sounds familiar, then it should do. He was only the director of 2017’s ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’, with a huge budget at his disposal. But every director has to start somewhere in the nightmare of financial restrictions. Given where he is currently in his career. It is hard to believe that Rian’s first film ‘Brick‘, a high-school noir. His first film which won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance 2005 for Originality of Vision. The film changed exceptions about what a high school drama and film noir could be.
But this was a long endeavour for Johnson, writing the film at 23 and directing the film at 30. Spend his 20’s trying to make it happen. The film should truly be experienced. It is worthy of the silver screen but never loses that independent feel. What surprised me the most about the film was how quiet it is. Sure there is dialogue but clever use of visual cues. Making a film is hard, but making a great film is even harder. Especially when time and money are not on your side. To find out more about the film and the director’s process head over to Rotten Tomatoes.
“Anybody who’s gone on making a movie at this budget level has gone through this. The hardest thing in the world in this process is when you have the money in place or you have an actor in place, and then it falls apart, and it’s all gone, and you wake up the next morning and you’re literally just at square one. You’re at the same place you were at three years ago with it, and you’re just like ‘argh’ – Rian Johnson
Brick Synopsis
After receiving a frantic phone call from his ex-girlfriend, teenage loner Brendan Frye (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) learns that her dead body has been found. Vowing to solve her murder himself, he must infiltrate high-school cliques that he previously avoided. His search for the truth places him before some of the school’s roughest characters, leading to a confrontation with a drug dealer known as “the Pin (Lukas Haas).
Recommended
