Vancouver Noir

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Noir is a messy term. Borrowed from the French and best-known in reference to film, noir has been applied to everything from The Long Goodbye to The Dark Knight Returns. Purists will only award the term to the work of half a dozen white guys who wrote in the early 1900s. Others throw it around as a loose synonym for mystery.

Dennis Lehane borrowed heavily from Arthur Miller when he called noir “working-class tragedy.” I admire that definition, I think it’s true, but it wanders slightly afield from the heart of the matter.

Noir is bad shit happening to people much like ourselves.

At its heart, noir is the ugly shadow of ourselves we always knew was there, but out of convenience chose to ignore.

You might wonder what shadows could exist in Vancouver, rain-spattered jewel of the Pacific Northwest. Nestled between the US border and the Coast Mountains, the city’s postcard charms are familiar even to those who’ve never been here, thanks to the films and TV shows shot in Hollywood North: The X-Files and Deadpool, Rumble in the Bronx and Jason Takes Manhattan. Vancouver is the so-called City of Glass. A nice place, in any case, and much too nice for noir.

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