This is a story about how a tiny technical mishap led me to think a little more deeply about a movie than I might otherwise have. But first, a warning: If you've not yet seen Brothers in either of its forms—Susanne Bier's Danish original, a.k.a. Brødre (2004), or Jim Sheridan's American remake (2009)—you may wish to read no further. Spoilers follow.
I already had Brødre in my Netflix queue when the remake came along. Wanting to see the original first, I avoided Sheridan's movie during its theatrical run, though I did read reviews that supplied a few plot basics about both films.
In Bier's version, the brothers of the title are called Michael and Jannick. The former is a straight-arrow U.N. military officer, the latter a seemingly hopeless ne'er-do-well. Early on, Michael ships off to Afghanistan, where he's captured by Taliban insurgents and presumed dead. Back home, Jannick, having just finished a prison term for a botched bank robbery, starts putting his life in order and strikes up a warm, protective relationship with Michael's wife, Sarah, and her two preadolescent daughters. Sarah and Jannick briefly consider sleeping together but think better of it. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, Michael is rescued. He returns home, severely traumatized, and soon, amid mounting jealousies and misunderstandings, he seems headed toward an emotional meltdown.
What the reviews didn't reveal was the central plot twist that drives the action during the film's second half. And, thanks to a smudged DVD, I missed that twist completely as I was watching Bier's film for the first time. The movie's midsection focuses mostly on Michael's imprisonment and his relationship with a fellow Danish captive, Niels Peter, a young radio technician. In one scene, the insurgents order Niels Peter to demonstrate the use of a captured rocket launcher, but having no advanced weapons training, he can't help them; Michael, the more experienced soldier, has to do it. It was around this point as I was watching the DVD that the image began to stutter and stall. But before I could retrieve the disc and clean it, the problem resolved itself, or so I thought. The film continued as Michael is being rescued. But now Niels Peter is nowhere to be seen. What's happened to him? Subsequent scenes—a questioning by Michael's superiors about the young man's whereabouts, an awkward visit with Niels Peter's wife, and finally a climax in which Michael, brandishing a pistol, threatens to kill his family and then himself (Jannick, now the stabilizing force his brother once was, intervenes)—all suggest that something terrible befell Niels Peter and caused Michael's trauma. Exactly what it was, however, is never clear. In the final scene, Michael is in a military prison, with Sarah telling him that unless he confides in her, she'll leave him for good. "He had a little boy," Michael sobs, referring to Niels Peter. End of movie.
Now that was interesting, I thought, immediately assuming that Bier meant to leave Niels Peter's fate an open question. After all, I reasoned, this was a European film, and in European films (especially if the director's name happens to be, say, Michelangelo Antonioni or, to use a living example, Michael Haneke) things often aren't spelled out with Hollywood-style explicitness. My guess was that Michael had had to witness his countryman's execution, doubtless a brutal one (a beheading perhaps?). But for whatever reason, Bier had chosen to leave us in the dark about the specifics. I sealed up the disc in the Netflix envelope, planning to mail it off the next day.
The irresolution nagged at me, however, and soon a bit of Web research revealed that, indeed, I had missed something vital: Michael had not simply witnessed Niels Peter's execution; he had been forced to carry it out himself at gunpoint. I unsealed the Netflix envelope, cleaned the DVD, and returned it to the player. Sure enough, there it was: the insurgents, having decided that Niels Peter is of no use to them, hand Michael a steel pipe and order him to bludgeon his comrade to death; otherwise, they'll just shoot them both. Later, back in Denmark, as Michael's guilt and rage boil over, he screams at Sarah, "Do you know what I did to get back to you?" The irony, of course, is that Michael now appears poised to destroy the very thing—his family—that had determined the dreadful choice forced upon him.
The accidental ambiguity that came with my first experience of Brødre spurred some intriguing thoughts. In some ways the truncated version of the film seemed, however unintentionally, more interesting, more provocative, more artful, than the movie Bier had actually made. Smugly basking in a sense of my "superior taste," I attributed my response to an aversion for works whose moral geometry seems a little too tidily delineated, a little too obvious. But if I had seen the film with the critical scene intact, would I have judged it differently? It's hard to say because my first impressions, based on an incomplete viewing, were so vivid. Any subsequent viewings would inevitably be colored by those impressions.
And then I had another thought: What really happened between Michael and Niels Peter turned out to be worse than the scenario I had imagined. Why did I assume a less awful alternative? Did I have such conventional notions about the qualities befitting a film protagonist that I wasn't prepared to admit that an ordinary, decent man like Michael was capable of so terrible an act? And even if what Michael did was somehow understandable—the alternative would have been his own death as well as Niels Peter's—his subsequent actions, as he slides into denial, are troubling to say the least. He lies to his superiors; he lies to Niels Peter's wife. He can't open up to Sarah. He almost annihilates his family. Bier's film, in its concrete conclusiveness, is actually darker than the reading I gave to the "ambiguous" version. Maybe my taste isn't so superior after all.
This brings me to a truism I too often forget. Like many of us who aren't film professors or professional critics, I'll frequently watch a film, register whether I liked it or disliked it, assimilate it in some way, and move on. Yet, if one claims to take movies seriously—those worth taking seriously, anyway—thinking about them seriously is an imperative. I'm grateful that a thumbprint on a DVD reminded me of that.
A postscript: I've now seen Sheridan's remake, which closely follows the original. Interestingly, on the commentary track, Sheridan says he toyed with the idea of not showing the execution scene until late in the film, when it would have been revealed in flashback (which is what I kept expecting to see, first time around, in Bier's version). But ultimately Sheridan opted for the same structure Bier had used. What difference would it have made if either director had gone this alternate route? Hmm, I guess I'll have to think about that some more.
I already had Brødre in my Netflix queue when the remake came along. Wanting to see the original first, I avoided Sheridan's movie during its theatrical run, though I did read reviews that supplied a few plot basics about both films.
In Bier's version, the brothers of the title are called Michael and Jannick. The former is a straight-arrow U.N. military officer, the latter a seemingly hopeless ne'er-do-well. Early on, Michael ships off to Afghanistan, where he's captured by Taliban insurgents and presumed dead. Back home, Jannick, having just finished a prison term for a botched bank robbery, starts putting his life in order and strikes up a warm, protective relationship with Michael's wife, Sarah, and her two preadolescent daughters. Sarah and Jannick briefly consider sleeping together but think better of it. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, Michael is rescued. He returns home, severely traumatized, and soon, amid mounting jealousies and misunderstandings, he seems headed toward an emotional meltdown.
What the reviews didn't reveal was the central plot twist that drives the action during the film's second half. And, thanks to a smudged DVD, I missed that twist completely as I was watching Bier's film for the first time. The movie's midsection focuses mostly on Michael's imprisonment and his relationship with a fellow Danish captive, Niels Peter, a young radio technician. In one scene, the insurgents order Niels Peter to demonstrate the use of a captured rocket launcher, but having no advanced weapons training, he can't help them; Michael, the more experienced soldier, has to do it. It was around this point as I was watching the DVD that the image began to stutter and stall. But before I could retrieve the disc and clean it, the problem resolved itself, or so I thought. The film continued as Michael is being rescued. But now Niels Peter is nowhere to be seen. What's happened to him? Subsequent scenes—a questioning by Michael's superiors about the young man's whereabouts, an awkward visit with Niels Peter's wife, and finally a climax in which Michael, brandishing a pistol, threatens to kill his family and then himself (Jannick, now the stabilizing force his brother once was, intervenes)—all suggest that something terrible befell Niels Peter and caused Michael's trauma. Exactly what it was, however, is never clear. In the final scene, Michael is in a military prison, with Sarah telling him that unless he confides in her, she'll leave him for good. "He had a little boy," Michael sobs, referring to Niels Peter. End of movie.
Now that was interesting, I thought, immediately assuming that Bier meant to leave Niels Peter's fate an open question. After all, I reasoned, this was a European film, and in European films (especially if the director's name happens to be, say, Michelangelo Antonioni or, to use a living example, Michael Haneke) things often aren't spelled out with Hollywood-style explicitness. My guess was that Michael had had to witness his countryman's execution, doubtless a brutal one (a beheading perhaps?). But for whatever reason, Bier had chosen to leave us in the dark about the specifics. I sealed up the disc in the Netflix envelope, planning to mail it off the next day.
The irresolution nagged at me, however, and soon a bit of Web research revealed that, indeed, I had missed something vital: Michael had not simply witnessed Niels Peter's execution; he had been forced to carry it out himself at gunpoint. I unsealed the Netflix envelope, cleaned the DVD, and returned it to the player. Sure enough, there it was: the insurgents, having decided that Niels Peter is of no use to them, hand Michael a steel pipe and order him to bludgeon his comrade to death; otherwise, they'll just shoot them both. Later, back in Denmark, as Michael's guilt and rage boil over, he screams at Sarah, "Do you know what I did to get back to you?" The irony, of course, is that Michael now appears poised to destroy the very thing—his family—that had determined the dreadful choice forced upon him.
The accidental ambiguity that came with my first experience of Brødre spurred some intriguing thoughts. In some ways the truncated version of the film seemed, however unintentionally, more interesting, more provocative, more artful, than the movie Bier had actually made. Smugly basking in a sense of my "superior taste," I attributed my response to an aversion for works whose moral geometry seems a little too tidily delineated, a little too obvious. But if I had seen the film with the critical scene intact, would I have judged it differently? It's hard to say because my first impressions, based on an incomplete viewing, were so vivid. Any subsequent viewings would inevitably be colored by those impressions.
And then I had another thought: What really happened between Michael and Niels Peter turned out to be worse than the scenario I had imagined. Why did I assume a less awful alternative? Did I have such conventional notions about the qualities befitting a film protagonist that I wasn't prepared to admit that an ordinary, decent man like Michael was capable of so terrible an act? And even if what Michael did was somehow understandable—the alternative would have been his own death as well as Niels Peter's—his subsequent actions, as he slides into denial, are troubling to say the least. He lies to his superiors; he lies to Niels Peter's wife. He can't open up to Sarah. He almost annihilates his family. Bier's film, in its concrete conclusiveness, is actually darker than the reading I gave to the "ambiguous" version. Maybe my taste isn't so superior after all.
This brings me to a truism I too often forget. Like many of us who aren't film professors or professional critics, I'll frequently watch a film, register whether I liked it or disliked it, assimilate it in some way, and move on. Yet, if one claims to take movies seriously—those worth taking seriously, anyway—thinking about them seriously is an imperative. I'm grateful that a thumbprint on a DVD reminded me of that.
A postscript: I've now seen Sheridan's remake, which closely follows the original. Interestingly, on the commentary track, Sheridan says he toyed with the idea of not showing the execution scene until late in the film, when it would have been revealed in flashback (which is what I kept expecting to see, first time around, in Bier's version). But ultimately Sheridan opted for the same structure Bier had used. What difference would it have made if either director had gone this alternate route? Hmm, I guess I'll have to think about that some more.
