Maybe I’ll Just Sit Here And Bleed At You

On Friday I watched this movie Brick. I really liked it. But I’m still trying to figure out what it was exactly. I accidentally made Rick watch it that evening just by talking confusedly at him about it. He made all the same, Whut? faces I did.* It was cool. But didn’t get me noticeably closer to being able to clearly describe it.

I mean, if I say ‘it’s a high school movie’ that couldn’t give you a wronger idea of what this movie is. I mean, yes many of the scenes occur on a high school campus but they never so much as set foot in a classroom. It’s just not that kind of movie. The this is happening to teenagers of it all veers into the story here and there, colours the characterisation in places, and just manages to make the whole thing more surreal by throwing this sort of left field humour absently into an otherwise completely serious plot.

Actually it’s more like some kind of noir thriller detective movie. Where the characters happen to be teenagers. Which in my head takes me to a sort of Veronica Mars place. But that’s wrong too. Although maybe closer.

Rick: So it’s like Bugsy Malone?
Me: Not even close.

Honestly, I spent the first fifteen minutes of it thinking, What even is this?

It’s kind of dark and kind of strange, and the language choices are… you know that sort of obscure slang you get in noir detective stories? But in a brand that’s pretty much it’s own.

It’s weird and obscure (in all senses of the word) and has this freaky soundtrack. I like it a lot, and half the time I’m not totally sure what I’m looking at. I was expecting one thing, but ended up with something completely else. Which I like so much better.

It’s weird. I didn’t mean to watch it twice in one day. Rick didn’t mean to watch it once. But you find yourself looking at it with your brain slowly ticking over murmuring, I don’t know what I’m watching, but I’m fascinated. Or maybe that’s just me.

* Plus watching it the second time around knowing the whole story it came into much clearer focus. Not sure if understanding what was going on made it better or worse — being totally clueless at the beginning puts you on the same footing as the main character, which helps, I think. But knowing what was going on was interesting too.