January 19, 2010: Brothers
I’ve seen a lot of movies in this run-up to Oscar season, and while Brothers played reasonably well for me at the time, in the weeks since I saw the film it has mostly faded from my memory. The consensus seems to be that we’re looking at yet another needless American remake of a superior European film, so I guess I should just enjoy the fireworks, lament the lack of originality in Hollywood, and schedule a time to see the original. Oh, and in the end, Brothers didn’t get any Oscar nominations.
What we have here is Tobey Maguire, a soldier and family man with a wife (Natalie Portman) and two daughters, a brother just out of jail (Jake Gyllenhaal), and a domineering father who completely approves of Maguire’s chosen military/family life, and completely disapproves of Gyllenhaal’s aimless ways. Maguire goes on another tour of duty to the middle east and is apparently killed in action, leading to grief back home and greater bonding between Portman and Gyllenhaal, but it turns out that Maguire was captured and remains alive. After several months, a chance raid by American troops leads to his rescue, but not before he has to endure brutal psychological and physical treatment including forced acts of violence he will have a hard time getting over. A guy does what he needs to do in order to survive, but at what cost to his sanity?
When Maguire returns home, he is clearly damaged. His children have taken a shine to his brother, and so has his wife, as far as he can tell. Maguire refuses to open up about his experiences overseas, and he slides towards an inevitable domestic blowup which is the only way to start the healing.
I have no trouble characterizing this film as formulaic and predictable junk, overblown yet sanitized. That said, it was still quite watchable. I wasn’t initially finding Maguire to be believable as a family man, since he and Portman come across as children acting like grown-ups with their two daughters and stodgily decorated big mid-western house. But I realized that that’s exactly what these young military families are like – guys entering the service just out of high school, and by age 25 living with established families in affordable but aging rust- and/or bible-belt housing. I figured Maguire would be out of his depth as a soldier (despite being somehow believable as Spider-Man), but he actually pulled that off very well, selling us the notion of a sergeant who is devoted to God and country, willing to do what it takes to stay alive but drawing the line at cooperating with the enemy or giving them information. The movie is peppered with other annoying and unoriginal elements – the precocious kids, idyllic scenes of Gyllenhaal playing with the kids, black and white characterizations of Maguire and his Corporal after their capture, the relationship between the two brothers and their father, Portman’s empty husk of a portrayal of a military wife, the domestic disturbance scene with the symbolic newly renovated kitchen being destroyed, dinner table arguments, a kiss in a moment of weakness. Need I go on?
Supporting work by Sam Shepard as the father, the rarely-seen-these-days Mare Winningham as his wife, Carey Mulligan in a totally undeveloped role as the wife of the Corporal who doesn’t make it back, Clifton Collins Jr. as Maguire’s supervisor, and good old Ethan Suplee (always remembered by me as the surly stereogram-obsessed mall fixture in Kevin Smith’s 1995 film Mallrats) as one of Gyllenhaal’s friends, all contribute what they can but none of them are featured heavily enough to make much of a difference. This is Jake and Tobey’s show, as I suppose it should be, but they aren’t given the free rein to properly cut loose outside of the pre-defined set pieces, and that leaves Brothers feeling constrained for no good reason.
I’ll have to see the original.
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