‘Brian’ by Jeremy Cooper   (2023) – 180 pages

The novel ‘Brian’ is not for everyone. If you are not a quality movie aficionado, you are probably not going to enjoy this novel. I have a simple test to determine whether or not you will enjoy ‘Brian’. If you have watched and liked two or more Ingmar Bergman movies, you will probably like this novel ‘Brian’. Otherwise you might as well skip it. It is filled with movie arcana about quality movies, the kind of movies shown on the Criterion Channel. I subscribed to the Criterion Channel for several years, so ‘Brian’ was right up my arcane alley.

On a deeper level, ‘Brian’ is about saving your life by finding something outside yourself that you can get totally involved with.

Brian is a character who has somehow survived a traumatic childhood. He lives alone and keeps to himself. He works at his desk job every day, but there is something missing. One night he goes to a movie showing at the British Film Institute, and Brian’s life is totally changed. There is a group of mostly men there who are movie fanatics. They watch the movies of Werner Herzog, Mike Leigh, David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, Ingmar Bergman, Clint Eastwood, etc. After watching the movie, they discuss it. Soon Brian is going there every night, sometimes even watching two movies.

“The sense of security experienced on noting the titles and times of a whole month’s movie bookings in his diary was immeasurable. It had never occurred to Brian that he would one day find such contentment.”

Brian develops a specialty in watching Japanese movies, partly to avoid having to interact much with the other movie buffs.

Much of ‘Brian’ consists of the discussions about these movies that Brian watches, and if you are not that interested in these types of movies, you probably will be bored. However I wasn’t, as Brian’s insights are quite engaging.

We follow Brian and his movie-going for many years, up to his retirement and beyond.

Only occasionally we are given insights into Brian’s life and traumatic childhood.

“Although Brian believed he was never going to have sex, with anyone, ever, he was prepared privately to admit that, if he did, it could as easily be with a man as a woman. It would never happen, the idea of being alone naked in a room with somebody else too appalling to contemplate, of any gender.

To be without his clothes with another person.

Inconceivable.”

Brian visits the grave of his mother who was “the least inadequate of his parents”. She was a Northern Ireland dissident who sheltered violent paramilitaries. Brian was born in prison and soon after was put in an orphanage. Neither Brian’s father or older brother visited him in the orphanage.

However the novel is centered on movie going. If you like discussions of quality movies, you probably will like ‘Brian’. Otherwise don’t bother.

Being a movie aficionado isn’t all that different from being a fiction aficionado.

Grade:    A