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ivyficI watched the movie Brothers last night. From the trailers, I thought this was a movie about one man being lost at war, presumed dead, and his wife moving on with his brother, and then him coming back and complications. Like a less cynical Le Colonel Chabert. And given my huge infidelity kink, sounded like a good time. That is not what the movie is about. The movie is about grief and post-traumatic stress.
In the first half of the movie, when Sam (Toby Maguire) has been presumed dead, the story focuses on his wife, Grace (Natalie Portman), who is so depressed she can barely get out of bed to take care of her two daughters, and Sam's brother, Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal), who has always been a fuck up. So the first part of the movie explores subtly this relationship of Sam and Tommy to their abusive father, and how that dynamic changes once Sam is gone.
Tommy has always been a drunk and a brawler, and never stuck around for much of anything. But since Grace and his nieces need him, he finds that he is able to step up and be relied upon. It's really not about latent attraction to Grace--it's about finally being needed. And the things that he does are specifically in reaction to his father's and his brother's expectations. The romance with Grace is kind of a red herring.
So that's the first part of the movie, and I was hoping the second half would be about Tommy. Because Tommy and Sam have clearly always gotten along and loved each other--it's the rest of the family Tommy can't handle. So I don't think Tommy would for a moment wish his brother hadn't come back. But at the same time, having Sam, the favored son, back means Tommy's pushed back into his old position--of being the fuck-up, the second favorite, the unreliable--and into his old habits. And that's a really interesting dynamic to explore. How having someone that you care about deeply in your life, who wants only the best for you, can knock you into old self-destructive patterns. I wanted a movie where the two brothers had to learn new ways to deal with each other, and where Sam had to acknowledge that he had some part in who Tommy has always been.
The second half of the movie, though, is all about Sam's PTSD, which Maguire plays with crazy, buggy eyes. It's clear that the guy who went missing isn't the one who came back, so you're just watching the family react (badly) to Sam's return. It ends on perhaps the most hopeful note it could (Sam in a VA hospital for, perhaps, forever), but I wish they hadn't felt the need to give Sam a specific action that explains his PTSD. It seems in every show or movie with an ex-soldier with PTSD it's always because they witnessed/participated in a war crime. Which is a little pat for an explanation. I mean, just war is enough.
Anyway, I digress. Sam's fixation on Grace's imagined affair with Tommy is clearly about Sam's avoidance of his own issues--not because of real sexual tension between the two. And Tommy mostly vanishes from the back half of the movie.
I have to give kudos to many of the performances--particularly the eldest daughter, who at ten, gives an amazing performance of a kid reacting to the emotional distress of the adults in her life.
So in the end I don't really know how to rate this one. It wasn't what I expected. And I'm not sure the movie even knew what it wanted to be, so it's hard to say if it accomplished its goal. Stuff happened? And then it ended.
In the first half of the movie, when Sam (Toby Maguire) has been presumed dead, the story focuses on his wife, Grace (Natalie Portman), who is so depressed she can barely get out of bed to take care of her two daughters, and Sam's brother, Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal), who has always been a fuck up. So the first part of the movie explores subtly this relationship of Sam and Tommy to their abusive father, and how that dynamic changes once Sam is gone.
Tommy has always been a drunk and a brawler, and never stuck around for much of anything. But since Grace and his nieces need him, he finds that he is able to step up and be relied upon. It's really not about latent attraction to Grace--it's about finally being needed. And the things that he does are specifically in reaction to his father's and his brother's expectations. The romance with Grace is kind of a red herring.
So that's the first part of the movie, and I was hoping the second half would be about Tommy. Because Tommy and Sam have clearly always gotten along and loved each other--it's the rest of the family Tommy can't handle. So I don't think Tommy would for a moment wish his brother hadn't come back. But at the same time, having Sam, the favored son, back means Tommy's pushed back into his old position--of being the fuck-up, the second favorite, the unreliable--and into his old habits. And that's a really interesting dynamic to explore. How having someone that you care about deeply in your life, who wants only the best for you, can knock you into old self-destructive patterns. I wanted a movie where the two brothers had to learn new ways to deal with each other, and where Sam had to acknowledge that he had some part in who Tommy has always been.
The second half of the movie, though, is all about Sam's PTSD, which Maguire plays with crazy, buggy eyes. It's clear that the guy who went missing isn't the one who came back, so you're just watching the family react (badly) to Sam's return. It ends on perhaps the most hopeful note it could (Sam in a VA hospital for, perhaps, forever), but I wish they hadn't felt the need to give Sam a specific action that explains his PTSD. It seems in every show or movie with an ex-soldier with PTSD it's always because they witnessed/participated in a war crime. Which is a little pat for an explanation. I mean, just war is enough.
Anyway, I digress. Sam's fixation on Grace's imagined affair with Tommy is clearly about Sam's avoidance of his own issues--not because of real sexual tension between the two. And Tommy mostly vanishes from the back half of the movie.
I have to give kudos to many of the performances--particularly the eldest daughter, who at ten, gives an amazing performance of a kid reacting to the emotional distress of the adults in her life.
So in the end I don't really know how to rate this one. It wasn't what I expected. And I'm not sure the movie even knew what it wanted to be, so it's hard to say if it accomplished its goal. Stuff happened? And then it ended.