Well, now that is out of the way so I can get back to the less important stuff....
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BRØDRE (aka BROTHERS). Now give me some sympathy in my analysis here, please, because I did watch this about a month ago on the train as I was making my move to Washington. I do want to get this written to talk about not just the movie itself, which I did find noteworthy, but also the idea of American remakes of foreign films. So I'm going to start with the movie (trailer) first and then rip on Tobey Maguire and American film.This Danish movie follows one of the oldest subjects in film: war. Like many such movies, especially those post-Vietnam, this one looks and the psychological affects of warfare both on the people serving and those that are left at home. As the title implies, there are two siblings in this telling, but unmentioned there is the one woman who is just as significant to the story and completes what because an uneasy triangle of family emotions and tension. Michael (Ulrich Thomsen) is the mature, elder brother who, as the movie commences, is preparing to be shipped off to Afghanistan and leave behind our female lead, his wife Sarah, who is played by the Danish actress Connie Nielsen. Interesting tidbit about her is that despite her background, she built her career in American movies such as Gladiator and Rushmore, with Brothers marking her Danish-language debut. The third major character is the flaky, younger brother Jannik (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) that grows closer to Sarah and her two daughters after Michael leaves. OK, so the trailer and everything about the movie I saw beforehand gives this plot point away, but it is a minor SPOILER ALERT, and if you don't want to know any more, skip to the end of the paragraph. Now that enough space should have passed for those not wanting to find anything out can leave, I will say that Jannik and Sarah become especially close as they both mourn Michael, who is incorrectly declared dead. This creates new complexity when Michael eventually returns home, especially with the raw wounds and possible PTSD (my diagnosis, not the film's) related to the events we see happen to him in Afghanistan. Giving away those events as well as how the story evolves would give away too much, but it is enough to say that everything becomes stretched toward the breaking point.
What I found worth writing about in this movie was the delicacy with which the director, Susanne Bier, handled her characters and situations that delve into much more dark, raw areas than we often see in film. Although war is not a new subject for film, she used a lot of the documentary-like methods used frequently in films of this generation to try and capture a realism of living those experiences. I don't necessarily mean the battle locations, but more the mundane, daily activities that one goes through as one tries to go one with a life that has been drastically altered by the absence of spouse or sibling. There are certain scenes in the movie that are longer than what one might expect and instead of cutting to the next shot, we often get a couple of seconds more of, say, Sarah's face that allows us to see not her instantaneous reaction, but how something settles into her visage. There is a lot of lingering -- mimicking, one might say, the way that Sarah's life is in a suspended state. About halfway through the movie there is a scene that I cannot describe in too much detail, but those who have or will see the movie likely know what I'm talking about when I say that one of the more dramatic shots goes on for an excruciatingly long period of time. It went on long enough for me to first think, "Gee, I think there should be a cut in here," and then eventually realize as it continued that by not cutting, the director was putting me in the head of the character and making it probably the most effective shot of the film. When it finally did cut, I found myself both mesmerized and horrified at the same time. Also, probably what the character felt.
I was also pleased to see the topic of Afghanistan -- a mission more closely tied to the United States than Europe but that has yet to yield a particularly memorable narrative film in this country. Perhaps that is why it has been remade as an American film and is being released this winter. Americans like a lot of the themes for war films brought up in this movie -- the idea of exploring the trauma at home hearkens back to Coming Home and the horror of war on combatants is, well, present in nearly every war film made since the 1970s. Having now seen this source material, it seems to me making an English-language movie 5 years later is a waste of time.
There was a time when remaking a foreign film made a lot of sense, at least from a financial standpoint, because a good plot was already in place and the state of foreign-film distribution was such that hardly anyone would have seen the original. But this movie was played in theaters on this continent and is easily available for rent with the diversified collection of services like Netflix. I do realize that just a few years ago Martin Scorsese won an Oscar for The Departed, which was a remake of a then four-year-old Hong Kong movie Mou gaan dou, known in the United States as Infernal Affairs. I do admit that case does work against my argument, but to a lesser extent because, having seen both movies, they are completely different film experiences. The general plot is the same but the style and character are reflect two vastly diverging approaches in the two tellings (and, I should say, they are both worth seeing). Having watched the trailer (see bottom) for the American remake of Brothers, it does not appear to be the case. The lines from the trailer mimic many of the lines from the movie and since the story is about a war that is still going on, I have a hard time seeing how the filmmakers will find something else to say about it. It looks like it will turn out to be a similar movie with the actors speaking in English instead. In defense of the movie I should note that it has some credentials that make it a more serious project than a simple Hollywoodization. The director is Irishman Jim Sheridan, who created such memorable films as My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father, In America and (as if that trilogy were not enough) the 50 Cent biopic Get Rich or Die Tryin'. With the aforementioned Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Natalie Portman, it shows some promise -- it just seems like a big ole waste of time. It's possible that with this team the movie might not be stripped of its quality and replaced by a weepy drama with Portman as the balling wife -- stripped of all her emotional scars and instead replaced by a teary housewife as American representation of women in movies often do. And since I did promise a complaint about Spider-man -- how about that he does not look noticeably older than Bubble Boy? Or that he looks just as small, if not smaller? The physical difference between the brothers I found to be a key element and when I see the two of them together it kind of ruins the dynamic.It seems to me that too often, no matter who is involved, American remakes are known for taking what was a good foreign film and turning it into something bland. It seems that it would be quite difficult to make a good movie once, but to take the same idea and do it again without making it a completely unoriginal, literal translation would be even more difficult. Think Vanilla Sky, originally Abre Los Ojos, also with Penélope Cruz. It takes so much effort to make a movie and as you described in questioning whether Darren Aronofsky should remake RoboCop, I can't help but wonder if the talented people behind this movie should invest their time making something more worthwhile. There have been hardly any quality representations in narrative film of the two wars in which the country is now embroiled -- the first acknowledged success being The Hurt Locker, THIS YEAR -- that I would much rather see a creative team make another quality movie on the topic instead of rehashing one of the only good ones that has been done thus far. I would go so far as to say that film has failed thus far to capture the significance of the post-9/11 environment, which is at least as significant of a cultural element as the Vietnam War. But that could be a whole different post. This is just concluding that the topic of Afghanistan and modern war has not been so thoroughly explored that only opportunity is a remake of a foreign film.
So that does leave the question of whether I will see the new movie. Yes, I expect I will. If it is good, I will want to see what they have done with it and whether that causes me to reassess my judgment. If it is not good, well that just gives me something more to write about here.
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Trailer for the new movie be here...
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