I like movies about people trapped in things, like Vivarium and The Cube -- a metaphor for the heterosexist trajectory of job, house, wife, kids that is so often promoted as the Meaning of Life -- I clicked on the Netflix movie Brick (2025), about "a couple whose apartment building is suddenly surrounded by an impenetrable brick wall." Plus it stars Matthias Schweighöfer (right), who has been in some gay stuff, so I figured there would be gay characters.
Scene 1: Munich. Tim (Matthias) in a Zoom room conference where they're complaining about a client. They ask for his input, but he exclaims that it's all bullshit. Like most meetings I've been in.
He flashes back to The Girl of His Dreams asking what he loves about her. Heterosexual identity established at Minute 1.30. He likes her eyes shining in an infinite sky. They smooch.
A montage of being in love stuff and kissing, kissing, kissing. It goes on for f*king ever. I'm fast forwarding to after her death, when Tim is alone and horribly depressed in his apartment.
Scene 2: Begins at Minute 7.2, after the five minutes of kissing. Tim awakens alone and horribly depressed in his apartment. Wait -- The Girl of His Dreams is not dead, just leaving him. Except when she tries to go out the door, it's bricked up! Metallic bricks of various shapes."Girl of His Dreams" is clunky. In the middle of kissing, we learned that she is an architect, so I'll call her that.
The windows are bricked up, too. Banging, pounding, and drilling doesn't work. They're stuck!
The Architect checks the building layout: maybe she could drill through another wall? Nope, the Bricks are all around the apartment.
There's no cell phone reception, so they can't call anyone (his cell phone background is them kissing!).
There's no running water, and almost no food in the fridge. I hope air can get through.
Scene 3: They break through to the apartment next door, where a Spanish Tourist (Frederick Lau) and his Girlfriend note that they got high last night, did stuff a few dozen times, and woke up to The Bricks. Their theory: Aliens.
Spanish Tourist becomes hysterical, so his Girlfriend takes him into the bedroom to do stuff and get high: maybe that will calm him down.
Next, the Architect discovers that the Bricks are highly magnetic -- silverware, keys, and things stick. But then they shoot away, injuring Tim.
Scene 4: Tim and the Architect burst into the next apartment, and reunite with the Spanish tourists. The dude is still hysterical, so they tie him up.The Architect has studied the history of the building, and knows that there are air raid shelters in the basement that connect to the subway. They just need to go through three floors to get there.
Scene 5: They break through the floor to the apartment below, where an elderly guy on oxygen brandishes a gun. "You're not getting any of my supplies."
20-ish Granddaughter persuades him to let them look for the tunnel to the subway. How long have they been trapped? I thought it was just a few hours, but he acts like it's been days.
Scene 6: They burst through to the apartment next to Elderly Guy, full of scary taxidermy and machetes. It is occupied by the owner of the building (Alexander Beyer). Dead-- his hands were cut off, and he bled out. Probably he had them in the wrong place when the Bricks appeared.
Into the apartment below. But this time, one jolt, and the floor collapses, injuring the guys.
Scene 7: They are greeted by Yuri (Murathan Muslu), who is happy to see them. He notes that he was visiting his "good friend" Anton for a few days, but Anton stepped out just before the Bricks appeared. I'll take "good friend" as evidence of gay identity at minute 41.
His theory: Contamination. There's a war going on outside, and the Bricks were installed to keep everyone safe. They can't leave, or they will die of radiation poisoning.
And, by the way, he was fudging a bit: Anton is lying dead in the bedroom. He collapsed in front of the wall -- it shorted out his pacemaker. I thought Yuri was going to turn violent, but he just lets them move on.
Granddaughter stays behind to offer her condolences over the death of his "friend." She appears to have identified them as a gay couple.
Scene 8: Next floor: the basement. They burst through a metal hatch that leads to the subway tunnel. But it's Bricked up, too!
Everyone is shocked. The Spanish Tourist is so upset that he shoots at the Bricks; the bullets bounce back and hit the Elderly Guy, who dies.
More after the break.
Scene 9: Back in Good Friend Yuri's apartment, they have dinner --he has enough food to last them for weeks -- and figure this must be some sort of test. Why were they chosen to be trapped in the Wall? Granddaughter's mom died of cancer. Tim and the Architect lost a child. Good Friend Yuri killed someone (he says that he is a cop, but I don't believe it).
Yuri's Good Friend Anton was working on an escape plan, and he left a lot of notes and diagrams that match the pattern of the tiles. Maybe they can help?
Scene 10: Upstairs in the Owner's apartment, Tim and the Spanish Tourist find a doorway with some weird markings. After a little experimentation, it opens into find secret room with leather furniture and painting from the Kama Sutra. Monitors display the four apartments, with cameras recording. When they backtrack, they see the Spanish Tourists doing it. Dude was filming everyone's intimate moments to post to his social media followers! Let's see the Yuri-Anton intimate moments.After the Bricks went up, the Owner was dead, but the filming continued. They fast-foward through Good Friend Anton engaging in a lot of calculations. Maybe he was working on something they could use?
Scene 11: Granddaughter stays behind and examines the Dead Anton. Hey, he didn't have a heart attack -- he was strangled. I knew Yuri was up to something! And here he is to strangle Granddaughter!
Spanish Tourist notices that Good Friend Yuri isn't there, goes to check on him, and finds the bodies. Yuri explains that Anton worked for Epsilon Nano Defense, which built and installed the Bricks as a defense system. When they went up, he figured that it was a system malfunction, but Yuri believed that they had been attacked. If the Bricks opened, they would all die. They fought, and Yuri killed him. I still think they were boyfriends, or maybe Yuri was a random hookup who stuck around longer than expected.
Scene 12: They torture Yuri so he'll reveal how to open the Bricks, but he retorts with a quote from Pascal: "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit in a room quietly." He doesn't know anything. But maybe Good Friend Anton's phone has some clues.
Scene 13: They find the phone and figure out how to use an app that he developed to open the Bricks.
There's a final fight with Yuri, and some people are killed. But the Final Pair gets the Bricks down and walks through the subway tunnel into the light.
Movie Cliche Quiz
a. Tim and the Architect
b. Tim and the Spanish Tourist
c. The Spanish Tourist and his Girlfriend.
a. Everything is normal. The Bricks just went up in their building.
b. Yuri was right: there's been a war, and they will soon die of radiation poisoning.
c. Anton was right: it's a city-wide malfunction that the defense company is working on.
Beefcake: None.
Left: More Beyer
Heterosexism: Constant, especially the endless kissing in the first act. How many times does a couple need to kiss, seriously?
Gay Characters: There are no pictures of girls in Yuri's apartment, nor does he mention a girlfriend back home. Plus he doesn't put the moves on Granddaughter: some nice queer codes. They could have been more explicit about it, but I think we can safely identify Yuri and Anton as gay.
Plot Holes: Lots. Who installs Bricks without telling the residents? And makes it impossible to get out?
My Grade: Not a lot of surprises here. Meandering, cliched plot. C, except for the endless kissing in the first act.
That gets an F.
See also:Bumper in Berlin Episode 1.1: Bumper from "Pitch Perfect" sings, meets a hunk, and doesn't get The Girl. Plus Morris Bleibtreu Bleibtreu is one of the other guys in the Frederick Lau photo.
Ich bin ein Berliner: Eight divine dudes from Deutschland with sizeable Schwanzen
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