I was in the minority on writer-director Rian Johnson’s debut feature, 2005’s much-praised underage neo-noir Brick. I find myself there once again with regard to his indifferently received sophomore effort The Brothers Bloom, which features Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo as fraternal con men trying to score (in both senses of the word) with a dizzy heiress played by Rachel Weisz. Both films are stylized genre exercises that speak to their creator’s burgeoning sense of confidence, but Bloom is light-spirited where Brick felt heavy handed. The 35-year-old director was in town last fall for TIFF and we spoke about his various filmmaking influences, the art of conning con-movie aficionados and why Rinko Kikuchi never gets to talk in movies.
Can we start off by talking about [director] Richard Lester?
I think I see where you’re coming from. He wasn’t someone I looked at specifically, but I can see the connection, definitely. A more conscious reference might be the films of the Marx brothers, right down to having our own Harpo in the mix through Rinko Kikuchi’s character. We wanted a chaotic, anarchic tone — the sense that the world is falling down around everybody’s shoulders and they’re there with their feet up on the table, drinking coffee.
One of the surprises about the film is that relaxed tone. Another is that there are actually less twists in it than one might expect. In a way, the real con of the movie is that it’s finally very sincere.
That’s right, precisely. I thought “what’s the last thing that an audience would expect at the end of a con man movie?” I realized that it would be an actual emotional payoff and the revelation that things really were as they seemed to be. Obviously, that effect depends on [the audience] having a certain knowledge of the genre.
And on you having it as well: you can’t deconstruct something until you know how to put it together. Did you study all the great con-artist movies while you were writing the script?
I was pretty well versed already because it’s my favorite stuff. I’ve been a big fan of Ricky Jay for years and years — his books, his performances, the things he loves, they’re the same things I romanticize. So what I had to do was sit down and put my thoughts in order. For me, what’s essential is that you love the genre besides understanding it. And then you have to bring in themes and characters that you really love.
It’s tricky to ask an audience to have those strong feelings for professionally shady characters. Is that maybe why you cast Mark Ruffalo, who can be a very warm actor, as Stephen, a slick operator? At first I thought he was miscast.
That’s exactly why I cast him. I first talked to him [Ruffalo] about playing Adrien Brody’s character, Bloom. On the page, you’d expect Stephen to be this cool-as-ice George Clooney type. I saw that [Mark] had this warmth to him, and that his lopsidedness and vulnerability could help the Stephen character. Those qualities would be there under the surface.
Speaking of surfaces, this film is visually different from Brick: there are a lot more exteriors, and a much richer colour palette.
It’s all about using the environment you’re in. Brick was shot in the town I grew up in and so I knew how it felt: that particular high school felt like a mental institution. In Bloom, we had the vistas in Prague so, you know, you want to shoot that right.
Your first two features are both very, very self-reflexive, and they’re both fictions about fictions. Would you say that artificiality is something that you’re interested in on a thematic level?
My response would be that yes, both films have very arch stylistic conceits. They’re very constructed. At the same time, they also have things that are very personal, which are supported by that style. In Brick, I think [the style] is a very resonant reflection of the interior state of adolescence… in a deep way, it’s about my experiences in high school. Bloom is very much about living one’s life as a storyteller — not just as a writer or a director, but as a human being.
Last question: why won’t anyone let Rinko Kikuchi talk in a movie?
[Laughs] She has a very nice voice. I didn’t write the part specifically for her. I was nervous about her doing it because I had seen her as the mute girl in Babel. I was worried that she would have an aversion towards [doing it again]. When we shot the film her English was not so good — she was still learning and understood more than she could speak.
She was definitely more enjoyable here than in Babel.
If you just keep your eyes on her for one pass of the film, it’s like a different movie. She’s always doing something.