It’s often said by respected and not-so respected writers
that Generation-Y is the worst generation to come into maturity. Our
never-ending need to document our lives on social platforms like Facebook, our apathy
for anything that is not within our purview, and apparently the worst sin of
all, the fact that we are devoid of originality and must mine the past for our
much maligned hipster sub-culture. Add to that people from our parent’s
generation describing Millenials in the workplace as “demanding too much and
not pulling their own weight” all contribute to Generation-Y being labeled by
many in the press as the Me-generation. Our only contribution to culture, if
one were to pay attention to the critics, is a brand of irony leaden work that
is painfully self aware, chock full of navel gazing protagonists, and endlessly
referencing something far older and more obscure than the derivative final
product that corporations market to us.
In the case of Rian Johnson’s film output one could
superficially say that the man is merely copying and pasting familiar genre
tropes onto carefully art-directed backgrounds. His debut Brick (2005) explored the harshness of high school life through the
prism of film noir while his sophomore feature The Brothers Bloom (2008) utilized the much loved conman/hustler
archetype to tell an idiosyncratic love story and sibling bromance. And his
most current feature to date Looper
(2012) melds elements of sci-fi dystopian literature with the cliché “protect
the homestead” trope found in a lot of Crime dramas and Westerns.
As the artist Pablo Picasso once said, “Good artists copy.
Great artists steal.” And though many references abound in each of these films
Johnson isn’t some hack re-appropriating the cool bits he likes from film, TV,
and literature and rejiggering it to fit his movie. The references in his films
appear organically and serve the story being told on screen. In an age where
information and intellectual property is widely available to the masses the
three films that make up Rian Johnson’s oeuvre are all set in hyper-stylized
worlds which quote heavily from other media but within these extraordinary
settings he explores such prescient themes as family, the impossibility of
creating long lasting relationships, and most importantly the nature of
storytelling itself.
Pressing play and stepping into any of Rian’s films it is
easy to get lost in the art direction. In Brick
the milieu is a small Southern California ghost town where high school
teens roam free nary an adult in sight. And as in all films about high school
there is a clear hierarchy and caste system; the top being occupied by the
jocks and rich brats who can afford all the best drugs while the bottom rung is
populated by the outcasts, loners, and pariahs who belong to no tribe. It’s
within this caste that our protagonist Brendan (Joseph Gordon Levitt) belongs
to.
Opening the film on Brendan’s eyes staring at the prone body
of a teenage girl in front of a dark abyss, a long shot quickly reveals it to be
the mouth of a sewage tunnel. The tunnel
will play a prominent role in the film and images of dark caves and black
abysses will recur throughout Johnson’s later films. It is a site linked with
death and violence. As the inciting incident in Johnson’s debut begins with the
death of Brendan’s ex-girlfriend, the teenage girl that Brendan is staring at
the start of the film.
Her death forces our lone hero to navigate through a small
town’s drug underworld. Of course, whereas the typical depiction of the drug
trade pre-Breaking Bad often relied
on a dead serious almost documentary presentation of the inner workings of
cartels and drug dealers. Johnson’s Brick
mines crime literature’s hardboiled past where everyone spoke in a specific
street patois and criminals had a lot more personality; utilizing these
conventions to satirize the rituals, codes, and slang that teenagers often
employ to create their own sub-cultures that ironically built on the foundations
of older popular culture.
As Rian Johnson stated in various interviews the primary
inspiration for his debut was the pulp crime writer Dashiell Hammett whose
literary creation Sam Spade became synonymous with the private eye detective.
For Brick though, instead of the
morally righteous anti-hero Spade, Johnson takes for his inspiration an earlier
Hammett creation, The Continental Op.
Appearing in a series of short stories and two novels The
Continental Op is a loner employed by the San Francisco Continental Detective
Agency but in reality has no allegiance to anyone. In one of Hammett’s first
masterpieces Red Harvest the Op
arrives in a town torn apart by two competing gangs. Instead of waging a holy
war against crime though Hammett’s anti-hero plays both sides against one
another all while getting paid in the process. The Op is not above cruelty and
in fact whereas Spade and later gumshoe incarnations would embody modern day
knights-errant the Op could often be mistaken for the villain in the piece.
Adapted for the screen Hammett’s original story has been
transposed to locations as varied as the Wild West and Edo period Japan, and
the Op himself has been played by celebrated actors like Clint Eastwood,
Toshiro Mifune, Bruce Willis, and Gabriel Byrne. In Brick the character of Brendan is clearly The Op’s progeny.
Incapable of trusting anyone he becomes cut off from what might be considered a
healthy relationship. Brendan moves
through the various high school cliques and though it might be safe to assume
that he learns to assimilate into the wider world the conventions of the
hardboiled novel prevent such things from occurring for our lone hero.
Playing the various players in the drama against one another
the final climax and denouement don’t offer much closer for Brendan. The “bad
guys” may have been dealt with, the femme fatale punished for her
transgressions, but like Oedipus Brendan’s narrow-minded quest to learn the
truth and punish the wrongdoers results in his discovery of an ugly secret that
would have been better left buried. Whereas most gritty expressionist crime
dramas like for example David Fincher’s Seven
(1995) would have their characters violently react and do something rash,
Brendan just quietly digests the information being told to him. Our lone hero
impotent and powerless in the face of great tragedy is proven to be just a
mortal.
In The Brothers Bloom
the eponymous brothers origin story is centered on Stephen (Mark Ruffalo), the
oldest brother, devising intricate scenarios involving his little brother Bloom
(Adrien Brody) inhabiting various roles in an effort to bilk unsuspecting
victims of their fortunes. While Brick reveled
in the ethos of the lone detective making their way through a morally
compromised world the setting for The
Brothers Bloom is far less dour.
Though Stephen and Bloom may have their issues with each other the
chemistry between Ruffalo, Brody, and Rinko Kikuchi, playing Bang Bang, the
Explosives expert in the group, is apparent the first moment they’re on-screen
together. This is a drama about the trials and tribulations of a gang of
gentleman thieves and rambunctious smugglers.
It’s interesting to read many of the reviews for Johnson’s
sophomore effort since many critics label this film as Wes Anderson-lite or a
poor man’s Ocean’s 11 and yet those
reductive comparisons completely miss the point. The film’s meticulous art
direction and quirky characters do share a similarity with Wes Anderson’s
visually unique dramas but that is because Johnson and Anderson are quoting
from the same filmmakers. It’s no secret that both directors have an affinity
for European art cinema from the 50s and 60s and Brothers Bloom and practically all of Anderson’s output bear this
out. Yet whereas in Anderson’s film the characters are allowed a moment of
catharsis that leads to a personal epiphany and the coming together of a once
broken family Johnson’s film allows for none of that. Bloom, by the end, does
get what he wants but at the cost of the disintegration of his makeshift
family. He may walk into the sunset holding hands with the girl he loves but he
hasn’t really changed. He is still an empty shell devoid of any personality
other than the ones his brother created for him. He may love Penelope (Rachel
Weisz), his wannabe smuggler girlfriend, but their love has only lasted as long
as it has because of her tenacity. This trope of having a woman play savior and
emotional anchor for our male protagonist would return again in Looper. In Johnson’s film universe men are
the weaker sex compared to the strong vivacious women that populate his films.
What carries The
Brothers Bloom along and adds a lot of levity to the drama though is
Ruffalo’s Stephen who is not just the leader or better yet ringleader of the
group. If Bloom is the audience surrogate than Stephen is the stand in for the
director. His meticulous web of lies could be seen as a post-modern commentary
on Generation Y’s hyper awareness of genre tropes and narrative expectations. Our
generation is so well aware of the inner workings of the various genres and
sub-genres of literature, TV, and film we rarely watch something to experience
something radically new but rather to have our expectations met. The cons that
Stephen comes up with are so intricate that they require flow charts and a
well-organized notebook to keep track of all the plot points but because
Stephen, like Rian Johnson, relies on a shared knowledge of both high and low
brow culture it all feels new and familiar at the same time, as Stephen says,
“The perfect con is one where everyone involved gets just what they wanted”, a
perfect summation of the power of film and storytelling itself.
For Johnson’s third outing as director Looper is set in a dystopian world where time travel hasn’t been
invented yet but assassins known as Loopers working for an unknown cartel kill
and dispose of victims who’ve been sent back in time. It’s never quite clear
how this world came about though one could see parallels with our own current
history, i.e. rise in unemployment, the housing market crash, the ascendance of
China as a major world power, being the inspiration for Looper’s setting. And a lot of background information is thrown at
us, so much so that the unresolved threads could feed countless sequels,
prequels, and sidequels. Referencing work as varied as Japanese anime, the
conventions of time travel movies, and even Peter Weir’s Amish crime drama Witness (1985) miraculously all these
varied influences don’t have the negative effect of making Looper just another derivative blockbuster picture. In fact, the
film bares all the hallmarks of a Rian Johnson picture.
Aside from the fact that Joseph Gordon Levitt returns as the
lead character it’s not such a stretch to say that Joe is the type of man that
Brendan, from Johnson’s earlier film Brick,
could have grown up to become. Both characters embody the traits of a typical
loner, and both Joe and Brendan share a strong desire to be a hero to a young
woman who initially didn’t ask him for help. Though in Joe’s case this desire
is tied to a selfish need to get his old life back.
Looper like
Johnson’s second feature The Brother’s
Bloom or even Brick is a story
about family and the consequences of not having the proper nurturing influences.
During the film’s second act when we move away from the city and spend more
time in the rural backwaters where Joe meets Sara (Emily Blunt) and her little
boy Cid (Pierce Gagnon) the narrative slows down a bit and the family drama
between mother and son unfurling on-screen is just as interesting the shoot’em
up action set pieces. Cid is, like most young children, unable to control his
emotions. Unlike typical kids his age though Cid has been gifted with
telekinetic powers, an ability he is unable to wield unless in great stress and
even than he can’t quite control it. Joe, a man who was sold to a gang while
still a young boy, must protect this boy from his older self, played by Bruce
Willis, since Cid will grow up to be a murderous tyrant in the future. Yet the
reason for Cid’s cross over to the dark side is because of the death of his own
mother, an act ironically caused by Joe’s older self. This cyclical “chicken or
egg” scenario is only broken with the younger Joe sacrificing himself,
literally not just ending his loop but the cycle of death and destruction.
The narrative employment of orphans and abandoned children
can be seen in Johnson’s other pictures like in Brother’s Bloom where the brothers in the film are orphans who’ve
been shuffled around from one uncaring foster parent to another until finally
coming under the tutelage of a brutal gang leader. Of course, unlike Joe who is
merely a single child the strong emotional bonds that the brothers share with
one another making it possible for them to grow up as fairly well adjusted
adults. The kids in Brick though,
left to their own devices, create their own sub-cultures and hierarchies that
result in kids mimicking antiquated and often dangerous modes of behavior.
In both of these earlier films the characters deal with this
sense of abandonment by retreating into affectation. The characters talk and
dress in atypical and anachronistic ways as a way to show their affiliation to
a group, lifestyle, and/or philosophy. For Joe, his well-ironed suit, nice
ties, slicked back hair, and blunderbuss are a symbol of power by way of its
wearer being identified as belonging to a specific organization. To take any of
that away from him is tantamount to killing him. Yet the props and costumes
that these characters use to craft their identities are more often than not
restrictive; preventing Brendan from caring for anyone other than the dead,
blinding Stephen to the pain he’s caused his brother, and validating Joe’s
violent actions as befitting the role of killer he’s chosen for himself.
Whereas contemporary American cinema is constantly mining
comic books and video games in an effort to provide the audience with as much
bread and circuses as they could want films like Brick, Brothers Bloom,
and Looper will outlive a lot of
those superhero franchises because the fictional worlds each film depicts is
whole and complete, tapping into a shared cultural narrative. We all know what
a noir is even without having seen a single Humphrey Bogart picture. We all know
what happens when a group of criminals get together to plan something. And we
are all well aware of the conceits of time travel stories. It’s part of our pop
culture heritage and now so is Rian Johnson.
Filmography
(feature films only)
Brick (2005)
The Brothers Bloom (2008)
Looper (2012)
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