New at Netflix: The wall has to go: Matthias Schweighöfer in “Brick”

In Cologne, a couple could not leave their own apartment last year because a chipboard blocked the front door on the carnival Sunday. The owner had probably wanted to protect the building from drunk passers -by. The fire brigade had to move and help. So it is not so absurd that a couple in the new Netflix thriller “Brick”, who starts on Thursday (July 10). However, “Brick” has much more dramatic consequences and it is a lot of mystery in the game.

Tim (Matthias Schweighöfer) and Olivia (Ruby O. Fee) live in a Hamburg residential building, the facade of which is currently being renovated. Both lived apart emotionally after their daughter’s miscarriage – he has built a wall around him, does not let anyone close and hides behind his work as a video game developer. It decides to separate from him.

But Olivia cannot leave the apartment together – because the door is suddenly bricked up – just like the windows. From a mysterious, black, impenetrable wall.

“It is not a carbon fiber, it is not a liquid granite, what kind of material is that?” Asks the architect visibly irritated. “All of this makes no sense, the arrangement of the bricks, the differences in size: why do you build a wall?”

Enclosed, without cell phone reception and flowing water, the couple sits firmly and becomes increasingly nervous. Tim and Oliver fight their way through their neighbors – together they try to solve the secret of the wall and find a way into freedom. But that ends fatal for some.

For director and screenwriter Philip Koch, who has already noticed the combat film “60 minutes” for Netflix and the science fiction series “Tribes of Europe”, the capture in a hermetic system is a “deep-seated human fear”. In addition, the wall stands for the lonely in our society and for depression. The wall as a metaphor-this representation is overused in the approximately 90-minute survival thriller.

The heart of history is certainly the relationship between the protagonists, who are also a couple in real life and have stood in front of the camera several times. Perhaps that helped when her characters in an emotional key scene scream the truth on the face for the first time in a long time.

“When I went into this emotion during the shooting, it was exciting in a way and was definitely fun at the beginning. At some point, of course, it also says,” said Fee in the dpa interview. “But it’s a super touching, emotional scene and the first time that the two really talk to each other.”

A dispute with obstacles

The sequence had caused a delay during the filming because the crew found it “emotionally flat” and “not credible” on the first attempt. Together with Schweighöfer and Fee, the script was then rewritten, the scene was turned again a few days later.

“Especially in scenes that are so emotional in which tears flow and anger in the game, you always try not to turn 20 take one after the other. You may take a break after 3-4 take and everyone is concentrated,” said Schweighöfer.

The gloomy chamber game is surprisingly bloody (released from the age of 16), told rapidly, but in some places it is quite predictable. At least the puzzle of the wall is dissolved at the end – even if it will probably not be satisfied.