Movie Review Cluster
Brothers—In Arms and Legs
Brothers
(2004)
Dir. Susanne Bier
&
Bootmen
(2000)
Dir. Dein Perry
The relationship between Michael and Jannik, the brothers in Brothers, is fractured by a fairly common theme in movies about siblings: Michael (Ulrich Thomsen), a high ranking soldier in Denmark’s armed forces, can do no wrong; his younger brother Jannik (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), something of a ruffian, can do no right. Their father adores Michael and scorns Jannik, and the dichotomy defines their actions. Even though their situation sets them at odds, the two care about one another deeply, and have a brotherly bond that enables them to fight and then hug hours later. Shortly after Jannik is released from prison, Michael is sent to Afghanistan, where his helicopter is shot down over enemy territory and he is presumed dead. Jannik takes the responsibility of caring for his brother’s wife, Sarah (Connie Neilsen), and their two daughters. As Jannik and Sarah mourn the loss of Michael, they being to develop feelings for each other, though they are both extremely reluctant to consummate. Meanwhile, Michael languishes in a small earthen cell as a POW. He is eventually freed and returns home, but, due to a monumentally brutal experience, as a drastically changed man. Everything is turned on it‘s ear, and nobody is quick to adapt.
Bootmen introduces us to another pair of brothers similarly at odds. Sean (Adam Garcia) and Mitchell live in a small steel town north of Sydney, Australia. Their mother has been dead for many years and their stoic father isn‘t really into open grieving. Sean blows off his steam dancing and hoping for a ticket out of the working class town. Mitchell is a good dancer too, but he’s more practiced at stealing cars. Sean gets himself a shot dancing with a company in Sydney and leaves town. While he’s away his girlfriend, Linda, who thinks that he’s forgotten her, gets drunk and succumbs to Mitchell’s advances. When Sean’s ego ruins his chances in the city, he returns home embittered only to find his gal in bed with his brother. Doubly furious but also doubly determined to prove himself to the world, he forms his own dance troop. They practice in an abandoned building on the steel mill lot. Using the acoustics of the place, and the many odd surfaces within, they soon form a ruff-and-tumble dance squadron that gives props to the town’s working-class roots while resembling gleeful performers on a gay parade float; flannel, dirty denim (shorts) and electrically-charged, metal taps affixed to work boots.
Needless to say, the steel mill needs saving, and Sean organizes an against-all-odds show that will raise enough money to train steel workers on new machinery and take the dance world by storm. The urgency of the performance is heightened when Mitchell is inadvertently killed in a scuffle with rival car thieves and Sean is faced with responsibility of raising his brother‘s unborn child by his own girlfriend.
Brothers is a particularly jarring use of the theme of brothers at odds because of its attention to detail. Instead of forcing emotion into loaded, dramatic situations, Bier focuses on the minute particulars of daily events in the process of grieving--building cupboards for you dead brother, building new relationships, sobbing in the shower--letting them bleed together. When the movie reaches its boiling point, enough of an investment has been made in fleshing out the characters and their common situation that it is quite a gut shot. Brothers remains fresh and true to its constituents and almost in their honor, doesn’t settle on a definitive quick-fixing ending.
Where grieving and emotional growth are concerned, Bootmen strokes heavily, like a twenty-pound mitt without fingers. Borrowing all of the conventions of hackneyed made-for-television drama and cranking the swollen orchestrations until the zeppelin yelps.
“When you don’t know your next step…improvise,” declares the film’s tagline. This is ironic as, aside from the dancing, nothing in the film feels off the cuff. Still, there is something hugely addictive about Bootmen. It’s pretty clear that director Dein Perry (also the founder of the real-life dance troupe Tap Dogs, which is the basis for the film) used movies with the dramatic flare of The Outsiders and The Karate Kid, not just as template but as a temple. The melodrama is thick like summer gnats, and Bootmen has more syrupy heart than a sack full of crippled kittens. But strangely it--like Brothers--never feels forced. Garish, gay and absolutely ridiculous: always; but forced: never. Both films deal with similar situations in dissimilar ways and both yield powerful results as different as night and day; Kennedy and Baldwin.
