MovieChat Forums > Brick (2006) Discussion > People that had difficulty with the dial...

People that had difficulty with the dialogue...

posted 12 years ago by thrakadoom
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First off I want to say that I loved this movie and I am 33. Also, I can accept that others did not enjoy it and I am not impugning their tastes, but...

What has baffled me on the forums here are the comments from people saying that people OVER the ages of 20-30 wouldn't understand the dialogue. The slang used here dates back to the 30's (or possibly earlier) so I find it more understandable that younger viewers would have difficulty with comprehension.

However, I am at a loss at how people around my age haven't been exposed to noir trappings before. Speaking for myself, I became pretty well familiarized with this type of stylistic vernacular by the time I was in my mid-teens. Primarily due to seemingly every tv show having a noir inspired episode and constant references in other movies. One widely seen example is the black and white movie that Kevin uses to scare off the burglars at one point in Home Alone. I recognized it back then as a genre convention. To me it seems like just another pervasive pop culture trope that I have taken for granted for most of my life.

I guess there isn't an actual point here, I was just surprised with how some are struggling with the language since it really didn't seem so inaccessible to me and I wanted to see if anyone else felt the same way as I do.

[–] DrZaat 12 years ago

Yes, I laughed when I saw the thread asking if anyone over 20 understood this film, as if the dialogue were based on contemporary teen speech. The more appropriate question would have been, "Did anyone under 50 understand this?"

As for your other point, comments on imdb boards seem to indicate that most young people avoid black-and-white films entirely; hence they would have no familiarity with the original movie sources of the noir/hard-boiled style of dialogue.

As for more contemporary references to this type of speech, I have to admit it doesn't seem as common to me as you suggest; however, that may be simply because it's so familiar to me that I don't always take note of it. I bet, though, that for many, any "noirish" episodes of tv shows are disliked for the same reason that this film is, because they demand that the viewer accept something different from the ordinary styles to which they are accustomed. Consequently, viewers would not retain much from having seen them.

I loved Brick and its skillful infusion of noir conventions into a high school setting. The scene in which Brendan is summoned to the principal's office is directly modeled on Sam Spade's confrontation with the District Attorney in The Maltese Falcon, one of my all-time favorites. I enjoyed seeing a young filmmaker pay such effective homage to a genre I love.