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The Sisters Brothers


I saw The Sisters Brothers a couple of weeks back at the Paradiso as part of the French Film Festival. This is the first English language film by Jacques Audiard and only his eighth film as director. Cards on the table time - this geezer is one of my favourite active directors (along with Denis Villeneuve). A Prophet, The Beat That My Heart Skipped and Rust and Bone are among the best films made in the past 20 years. So by these measuring sticks, The Sisters Brothers comes up short, but not by too much.

The film charts a typical Western cinema journey. Character A has something or has done something and Character B has to hunt him down. The Quest type of plot as outlined by Christopher Booker and repeated ad nauseam throughout film (and story) history. Here though, it coalesces quite nicely with another of Bookers plots, the Voyage and Return. Character A, in this case, is Riz Ahmed's chemist Hermann Warm (and later, Jake Gyllenhaal's John Morris). Character B here are the titular brothers, Eli and Charlie Sisters - John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix. All these guys knock seven bells off it but special mention has to go to Phoenix. He's getting better with every film. The film meanders along nicely for the first two acts then picks up pace a little after a 'situation' occurs. All the while there's a mirroring of two buddy films - the damaged, violent brothers on one hand, and the idealistic, possible lovers on the other.

There are confronting 'Audiardian' moments peppered throughout. Eli ingest a spider while sleeping and later vomits up hundreds of baby spiders. A bear attacks the camp but is only the aftermath is shown. Eli buys a new-fangled toothbrush and later notices Morris also has one. The chemical substance Warm has developed to find gold comes into play. And there's a fantastic sequence where the brothers turn up in the town of Mayfield and are confronted by the local town overlord (also Mayfield) played by trans actor Rebecca Root. Shit hits several fans.

Overall, the The Sisters Brothers is a unusual reworking of the old American Western style and its all the better for that. It does flag a bit at times (it's just over two hours long and could do with some snips) but I found myself thinking about it on and off in the weeks after seeing it. Result. One final note, Rutger Hauer's in this too and his input consisted of zero lines, one glimpse of him through a window and finally him lying in a coffin. A pretty good day's work, I'd say.

See also:

 If I had to pick one other Audiard, I'd plump for A Prophet (2009) and....ah, what the hell, another Audiard, The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005). Mints.

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