Director Sheridan produces another family drama with
‘Brothers’
‘Brothers’ starring Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhaal and Tobey
Maguire
Director Jim Sheridan has been nominated for six Oscars and he
is likely to get another nod for his latest movie
”
Brothers.
”
As with many of his movies, which include
”
In the Name of the Father,
”
”
The Boxer
”
and
”
In America,
”
this latest film deals with family relationships and loss. The
movie is a timely one, as it is about a family that struggles with
the aftermath of having a member repeatedly deployed to
Afghanistan.
Director Sheridan produces another family drama with ‘Brothers’
‘Brothers’ starring Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhaal and Tobey Maguire
Director Jim Sheridan has been nominated for six Oscars and he is likely to get another nod for his latest movie “Brothers.” As with many of his movies, which include “In the Name of the Father,” “The Boxer” and “In America,” this latest film deals with family relationships and loss. The movie is a timely one, as it is about a family that struggles with the aftermath of having a member repeatedly deployed to Afghanistan.
In the movie Grace (Natalie Portman) and Sam (Tobey Maguire) are high school sweethearts who are settled into their life raising two daughters, though Sam is set to be deployed again. Just before his latest deployment, his younger brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) is released from prison. Tommy is the outcast of the family, and he has been away long enough that his nieces don’t know who he is.
Before he leaves on his latest tour of duty, Sam leaves a letter with Maj. Cavazos, a friend and colleague. It is a letter for Grace if he is to die in combat. Once he is deployed, Sheridan moves back and forth between Grace and the girls, and Sam’s time in Afghanistan.
Sheridan takes his time with the scenes in the movie, which some viewers might find a bit slow, but it allows the news or awareness to sink in for viewers just as it does for the characters. In one scene, Grace is in the bath relaxing when two uniformed men come to the door. Everyone knows what this means, but Sheridan takes the scene slowly. Maggie and Isabelle smile at the men and laugh before they are asked to call their mother from the bath. And when Grace starts down the stairs in a bathrobe and stops at the sight at her front door. She doesn’t crumple into tears, but stands still. But her daughter Isabelle knows something is wrong when she looks up at her mother. Grace holds it together until the girls are out of the room. Sam’s helicopter crashed over a body of water in Afghanistan. He is presumed dead.
Grace begins mourning by watching home videos alone after the girls are asleep. Tommy shows up in the middle of the night after driving home drunk in Sam’s truck. He’s been sneaking a key that Sam hid for him outside the house. When Grace tells him Sam died, he just gets angry and leaves. At the funeral, Tommy butts heads with his father Hank (Sam Shepard), himself a military man who soothes his sorrow with sips from a flask. Though Tommy is the only one in the family who has been arrested, he’s not the only one who hits the bottle too hard or has anger issues.
After Sam is dead, Tommy starts to take some responsibility with Grace and the girls. He helps her at home, takes the girls ice skating, and fills a little of the void left behind. Sam isn’t really dead, however, as viewers know from Sheridan’s scenes in Afghanistan. Sam and another soldier survive the crash and are held as prisoners by Afghan men. They are left hungry, isolated and are tortured. Sam does something he can’t live with to get back home to his family.
Tobey Maguire transforms into a Marine captain who has wasted away, been beaten and returns home broken to his family. Maguire looks like a man suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as his blue eyes stare vacantly out or when he tenses up as his daughters argue over the things that kids argue over. Jake Gyllenhaal and Natalie Portman likewise fill in their characters well as two people mourning the same loss.
Sheridan uses actions in his movie to tell us how his characters are feeling, rather than having them talk it out. Sam doesn’t have to say a word for his family to know something is off with him, and one of the scenes that shows it best is with his oldest daughter backing away from him as he comes close to hug her.
While most directors would focus on the adult relationships in the movie, Sheridan has a way of allowing the children in his movies to speak volumes, too. Grace and Sam’s children, Isabelle (Bailee Madison) and Maggie (Taylor Geare) are allowed plenty of screen time to act like kids. And like kids, they often know more about what is going on than adults give them credit for. When Isabelle refuses to hug her father before he leaves on another tour, it’s not because she is so engrossed in her book, but because she doesn’t want her father to leave. And she is the one who is most weary of him when he returns.
The role of the kids in the family is reminiscent of Sheridan’s film, “In America,” which is about an immigrant Irish family in 1980s New York who try to make a life together after suffering a tragedy. Christy (Sarah Bolger) and Ariel (Emma Bolger) are the glue that holds the family together – and really what holds the film together. The girls’ relationship with a neighbor (Djimon Hounsou) is more mature than most relationships between adults. The girls steal the scenes from actors Samantha Morton and Paddy Considine, who play their parents.
Like “In America,” “Brothers” is a serious film filled with moments that feel a lot like real life, and it is worth a watch.
