Not everyone jumps on board his style, so enthusiastic and eager to subvert the genres he tackles, but Rian Johnson is one of the most alive creators in American cinema right now. Someone with a deep understanding of the kind of movie they decide to tackle, so they know where to start to turn it upside down. And, now, established as one of the funniest mystery storytellers.
But that comes from afar, you don’t have to stop at the fabulous ‘Puñales por el espalda’ and ‘El misterio de Glass Onion’ or the promising and still unpublished in Spain ‘Poker Face’. Hopefully, the latter could reach us through the new SkyShowtime platform that is giving so much talk. And right on SkyShowtime we can see the mystery with which the brilliant career began from Johnson: ‘Brick’.
High school dramas (noir)
Here Johnson by the hand of his fetish actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt makes an interesting rethinking of detective films, noir and intrigue. He does it with a well-drawn mystery that falls within the genre of American indie… and adolescent cinema, showing from a very early age that we are before a director as ingenious as lent to the joke.
We follow a young man from a California high school who discovers how his ex-girlfriend, who unexpectedly reappears to contact him, has disappeared without a trace. Which movie private investigator will embark on his search with the help of his best friend, unraveling the dark secrets of his high school classmates along the way. A process that will also lead him to hard confrontations, but he will not give in at any time if it means recovering that woman who obsesses him.
The tone is perfectly established from the first bars, and the classic references of this class of tapes appear unequivocally. It’s great fun to recognize them, giving a welcome lightness to a story with the well created neo-noir atmosphere. Johnson is also leaving great details of his clarity when it comes to staging, giving his best within the limitations of indie.
‘Brick’: handling keys
The way he engages with noir makes subversion elegant and not some clever-ass gimmick. The way in which he develops it without leaving the framework of the institute contributes a wonderful freshness that still persists. This understanding of both worlds (the intrigue and the coming of age) causes them to go hand in hand wonderfully, since Johnson finds the cracks through which they can be assembled.
Look if the film is noir because its plot ends up being a mess after a few minutes, but even so you get on his proposal. You get on the johnsoneta. That, or it seems like a bad joke to you, something that happens with every work in his filmography, which always denotes his particular style. That bold way of narrating, with ambition and without fear of being too shocking for the viewer, makes your movies feel full of energy and are more refreshing than other contemporary genre exercises.
In Espinof | The best film noir movies of all time