‘Brothers’ is a Danish film, directed by Suzanne Bier, that was apparently some kind of hit at Sundance. It is very good, though frequently painful to watch, and it is that pain that makes the movie so powerful. The setup is pretty simple. There is Michael, the good brother, who is a soldier and a good husband and parent, and Jannik, the bad brother, who is a fuck up, released from prison as the movie begins. Michael goes with Danish/NATO forces to Afghanistan, and on his first day there, the helicopter he is in is blown out of the sky, and everyone believes, and his family is told, that he is dead. In fact (and this is no spoiler because the movie is quick to tell us), he survives and is kept captive by some Afghan military group. Meanwhile, Jannik rapidly shapes up as he helps Michael’s wife, Sarah, and kids get over their grief, and he becomes dependable and perhaps a little in love with Sarah. Michael is forced to commit an atrocity, and then is rescued. But when he returns home, his rage, guilt and bitterness overwhelm him and he spirals downhill. Thus, a little too neatly, the good and the bad brother trade places.
Despite the too-pat storyline, this is a beautifully acted and subtle portrait of a family torn apart and trying to put pull itself together. All the leads are excellent, and Connie Nielsen, as Sarah, is astounding. She manages grief at the same time as she knows she has to protect her two young daughters from the pain of losing their father. The camera lingers on her face (which is, after all, incredibly beautiful) and a whole range of different emotions will pass across it in the space of a few seconds. Almost all the scenes are interiors, mostly of pretty cramped houses, and Suzanne Bier gets to use low lighting and shadows to accentuate the way the emotions register on the faces of her characters. Enjoyable would be the wrong word, but this is well worth seeing.
Yeah…. I think I’d emphasize the “too-pat”. It was very well-acted, but I just didn’t get into it the way you did. Still, Connie Nielsen is great here; she’s also pretty good in the not-very-good Demonlover, which, rather than the Cinesex-late-night raunch it appears to be, is a art-house existential thriller.
this is next in my netflix queue.
just watched this, and liked it a lot. these danes seem to take family bonds, especially of the male variety, very seriously. but i didn’t find it ‘pat’ at all. why? it’s not like jannik becomes a saint. and he’s clearly more than a little in love with sarah. they are both attracted to each other, which is not exactly the saintly thing to be. but in families roles switch all the time, sometime on a dime (i know by personal experience, having been rescued from my seemingly permanent dog house by one of my sister’s worsening temper). jannik gets better because michael’s death opens up the space. there can’t be two good ones in one family, apparently. or at least not in a family in which the father so openly favors one son over the other.
i didn’t find the interiors cramped. rather, they seemed luminous and cozy to me, in a very homey but also well-off sort of way. i love the way the danes (besides working out patriarchal fights) color their interiors. they are always a source of decorating inspiration to me!
two observations: once again, the saintly mother. what if the mother had been the one to go ’round the bend? what if she had started throwing the house around? it would have been so much worse, so much more serious. but women stay put, stay sane, love everyone, understand everyone — while keeping absolutely gorgeous. i’m reminded of john cassavetes’ a woman under the influence but also, because i just saw it (and would like to write about, but please don’t let me stop you — i’ll be happy to comment!), notes on a scandal. and how about the forest for the trees? women’s rage is always a hair’s breadth away from battiness, whereas men’s rage tends to be rooted in cultural dissonances towards which we are meant to be understanding if not sympathetic.
point two: [SPOILER] if the cops who picked up jannik and michael during their fight had been american, michael would have been dead in no time flat. why are we so violent in this country? i can’t stand it.
thanks for the recommendation, chris. i just reread maxine hong kingston’s the fifth book of peace, part of wich is about war vets, and this really spoke to me. it could be read as a movie about the post-9/11 world as much as as a movie about family. i suppose we are going to get a brand-new onslaught of PTSD vets’ stories. i can’t wait.
(the brothers of the title are not just the two blood brothers, but also those brother soldiers who live, fight, and die together for wars they don’t give a shit about. as the father says at the beginning, michael is meant to go to war to improve the fate of his country, while, clearly, he’s doing nothing of the sort).
Well–your reading’s more interesting than my dismissal, so I’ll bow to you and to Chris. The film just didn’t hook me. (Perhaps, perhaps: what makes the film seem pat is that, like the too-familiar position for the ‘good wife,’ I found the film’s depictions of masculinity pretty damn familiar. To be a ‘good man’ is not all that dissimilar from being a ‘bad man’; that is not an uninteresting narrative and cultural problem, but it felt to me that the brothers were trapped in types rather than roles. But, again, your appreciations are worth twenty of my challenges.)
I’m more interested in riffing on Gio’s point about the depiction of female rage. But I’m going to steal a quote and start a new thread…
Weak looking American remake on the way starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, and Tobey Maguire