MovieChat Forums > Brick (2006) Discussion > This movie is a satire!

This movie is a satire!

posted 13 years ago by walkercr3
21 replies | jump to latest

I have to admit that when I first started watching this film, I was like many other posters who thought this movie was unrealistic. High School kids simply don't act this way! However, I soon realized that this was all intentional. The characters could easily have been fully grown adults but by making them high school students the movie is poking fun at film noir genre conventions. I'm baffled that so many of the posters here didn't pick up on this. Perhaps if the characters were younger, like ten years old or so, then the joke would have been more obvious...

[–] taggerez 12 years ago

It's not quite satire, it's more genre bending or genre mixing. The film is a cross between a 1940s, 1950s film noir crime drama and a teenage dope film. It's Touch of Evil meets High School Ceasar.

The dialogue is terrific and out-of-place which lends a hard-edged quality to the film that takes it out of the ordinary.

[–] 12 years ago

[deleted]

[–] the sphynx 11 years ago

More of a hybrid than a satire: Phillip Marlowe goes to high school. Like "Clueless", which successfully mashed together Jane Austen with Southern California Valley Girl high school drama, against all odds, it totally works.

[–] KidDBrock 11 years ago

I think "homage" would be more accurate than "satire". It is more of a tribute than it is poking fun.

[–] fastoutfield 11 years ago

Bingo. And a mere two years after the OP.

[–] windquake 11 years ago

I don't think "satire" is the right word. Your explanation of it seems correct though (other than it being a joke).

This is really more of a homage than anything.

I hate IMDB's Signature policy...

[–] franzkabuki 10 years ago

A satire - or parody, more like - requires a clear, usually ironic, distance from what is being parodied. Brick, however, doesn't really have such a distance as the drama is treated as serious business of considerable emotional weight (even though the junior gumshow mostly moves about with customary noir coolness). Here, noir is entirely internalized - and this internalization, for once, goes deeper than just aping the surface level tropes, reaching for the troublesome rot at the heart of the corrupt world that belies the whole noir mythos. It's a bitingly clever film, yet one that doesn't spend most of the running time congratulating itself for this cleverness.

"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

[–] TakeARisk 9 years ago

It's straight up neo-noir, not a satire.