Brothers

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Movie Details

• Genre: Drama, War
• Release Date: 2009-12-04 Nationwide
• Running Time: 110 min.
• Director: Jim Sheridan
• Cast: Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Tobey Maguire, Mare Winningham, Clifton Collins Jr., Carey Mulligan, Bailee Madison, Patrick Flueger, Jenny Wade, Luce Rains
• Producer: Michael De Luca
• Writer: David Benioff, Susanne Bier
• Distributor: Lionsgate Films
• Official Site: Brothers Official Site

Danish director Susanne Bier's award-winning follow-up to Open Hearts begins with the release of one brother from prison and ends with the imprisonment of the other. Though Bier's film is a topsy-turvy parable with biblical echoes, what's at stake is not the love of a father (or Father), but the power of myth vis-à-vis morality and masculinity in times of war--and peace. Michael (Ulrich Thomsen), the good son, is a major in the Danish army who leaves home to help the "good fight" in Afghanistan. His beautiful, loving wife Sarah (Connie Nielsen) and their daughters host a farewell dinner, attended by Michael's proud parents along with the sullen black sheep of the family, Jannik (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), who has just finished doing time for robbery and assault. Afghanistan (shown only through Michael's foreign perspective) changes the major irrevocably; time spent with the needy Sarah and her daughters alters Jannik just as much. Each brother discovers in himself the other he so hated and desired to be. It sounds (and sometimes feels) a bit tidy, but Bier's handheld camera pushes the viewer into the murky tangle of these men's psyches, and her film's crisis becomes meaningful in a way that Lars von Trier's arbitrary machinations never approach. If you want to survive in war, must you kill the weak parts of yourself? Does the same thing happen within families? How can the rougher edges of masculinity be focused and utilized within a peaceful society? The female characters, alas, remain rather reactive creatures: Perhaps Bier's next movie will allow sisters the same range of behavior these fucked-up brothers are forced to acknowledge as human. (Terri Sutton)