Film Review: Brothers (2009)

It is perhaps not so implausible to draw a few parallels between the films, Brothers (2009) and Jarhead (2005). The links are all there. Thematically, both films deal with the personal impact on the lives of Americans who are shipped off, or whose family members are shipped off to the Middle East to fight a war of the utmost controversy (although few wars fail to evoke it). The key difference, of course, is that whereas Jarhead is set in the first Bush administration’s Gulf War, Brothers is set in the latter Bush administration’s War on Afghanistan. Another rather obvious link would be the casting of Jake Gyllenhaal in a central role, although this time, Gyllenhaal’s Tommy Cahill, the family’s black sheep, stays home. And if one were to push the the two films’ parallels even further (albeit questionably), both films were directed by well-established, generally well-respected filmmakers who have enjoyed multiple critical and commercial successes, namely Sam Mendes, who directed Jarhead and Jim Sheridan, who directed Brothers.

The above-mentioned parallels between Brothers and Jarhead might seem coincidental, but on a less superficial level, their parallels run even deeper. In both films, I was struck by the superlative portrayal of the effects of war on the individual, particularly on young men. In Jarhead, Gyllenhaal’s Anthony Swofford is trained to kill by highly sophisticated means. The film’s comment, then, centres on the irrelevance of war, as Swofford and other members of his regiment never get to kill and are recirculated into general American society, possessing knowledge that they never got to use and never will. To some, this knowledge equals a power that would place these individuals in an almost god-like category. Others might argue that these individuals have been trained to disregard their humanity, which reduces their existence to that of an animal. It is the latter category through which one might parallel the two films.

Captain Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire), a disciplined, courageous young father who aspires to follow in his father’s footsteps, who is a Vietnam war veteran played to perfection by Sam Shepard, is sent to Afghanistan. There, he is taken captive by an extremist group and tortured for information. Meanwhile, back at home, his wife, Grace (Nathalie Portman), is informed that her husband had died. Her intuition tells her otherwise and throughout the difficult months that follow, she struggles to come to grips with her husband’s death, while naturally developing romantic feelings for Sam’s ex-convict brother, Tommy (Gyllenhaal). When Sam returns alive, the delicate balance of the central characters’ lives begins to unravel. It is at this stage that the film starts to deal with the raw, alpha-human behaviour referred to above.

While in Afghanistan, Sam was forced to do terrible things under torture (the details of which shall remain undisclosed). Being re-introduced into society and his former suburban life, one is reminded of the ancient philosophy that when one steps into a river for the second time, neither you nor the river are the same. And then some. The audience knows to what extremes Sam had been driven and the contrast between these actions and his fatherhood of two very young girls makes for a volatile situation at the best of times. He now struggles with the loss of his humanity in a world that requires the utmost humanity. The animal needs to be locked away again.

These films that could perhaps be seen to make up the current thematic zeitgeist, including Brothers, Jarhead, Cronenberg’s A History of Violence (2005) and Eastern Promises (2007), which are not directly related to the war in the Middle East, but deal with similar themes of violence, and Redford’s Lions for Lambs (2007) all deal with the fragility of our humanity. In all these cases, man’s struggle with his animal self is portrayed by men, which leads to an altogether new and perilous debate. However, what is perhaps reassuring to observe is that these films usually enjoy relatively large audiences and draw a great deal of attention. Perhaps we have not lost our humanity. These films generally tend to lean towards a positive outcome, which could not be said of many films made circa World War II that offered a bleaker outlook on the situation (consider the film noir movement). However, it should not be overlooked that these films also offer a warning of how close to the brink of collapse we are as a species.

Brothers offers precisely what we want from ‘Oscar season’. A meaty, well-performed, well-crafted and overall well-packaged film that offers more than enough food for thought to mull over and perhaps, like all good art, dare to change one’s perceptions.