Film Review: Brick by Chance and Fortune Delivers an Overdue Love Letter to St. Louis

"I was always wanting to go to far-away places, which I did eventually do and I said 'this is as pretty as St.Louis, almost. Because the quality of the everyday home in St. Louis as far as the look and the feel was so much superior to the other places I visited." - Sheila Harris, Artist

Admit it, there's just something about brick. Each one of the thousands of bricks that comprise a single St. Louis home has been pulled from the earth, formed, fired, touched by a human hand, carefully nudged into place, layer upon layer, one on top of another. Even a flat brick wall is a tapestry of subtle variation that displays the warmth and strength of human building, unmatched by other materials.

Bill Streeter's Brick by Chance and Fortune is a long overdue love letter to the City of St. Louis, America's brick city. Like most love letters, it's passionate and honest, if a bit convoluted. The film opens with Sheila Harris expressing her passion for brick as an artist, setting an effective tone for the film. It then turns to Michael Allen of the Preservation Research Office to quickly root St. Louis brick in the earth under the current city, providing the hook for why brick matter here more than elsewhere.