Brothers: Moral Improvement, Moral Deterioration

This review was published originally on cinekklesia on September 28, 2006.

Perhaps the two questions that interest us most are: "How did we end up the way we are?" and "How do we change and become different?" Academics, writers, ministers, and talk-show hosts all obsess about these questions because within them lie the seeds of moral understanding and reform. Moviemakers, too, take stabs at answering these questions. Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run (1998), for example, argues that human outcomes are simply random: something as simple as bumping into a person on the street can have far-reaching, life-long effects. We are merely billiard balls, bouncing around the table. David Cronenberg's A History of Violence (2005) takes a different approach, implying that moral character is not random, but deeply ingrained; we cannot escape our past easily, and genuine change is a hard, long, painful process that never really ends.

Susanne Bier's Brothers—or Brødre—(2004) adds an interesting voice to this discussion because it does not address explicitly the underlying reasons behind moral development and change. Rather, the movie demonstrates the process by which two siblings start out at opposite ends of the spectrum and slowly trade places.

Michael (Ulrich Thomsen) is a major in the Danish army and by all accounts, a stand-up guy with a comfortable, middle-class life. He appears to be happily married to Sarah (Connie Nielsen), and he also appears to adore his two young daughters. At the start of the movie, we learn that he is going to be deployed to Afghanistan in order to work with NATO peacekeeping forces. Thus, in a conventional sense, he is doing "good work" — and serving in a significantly less controversial battlefield (i.e., he's not in Iraq).

On the other side of the ledger is Jannik (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), Michael's younger brother and by all accounts a ne'er-do-well. At the beginning of the film, we see him leaving prison after having served a sentence for assault. He drinks a lot, doesn't have a steady job, and seems to carry a big chip on his shoulder.

After Michael leaves for Afghanistan, we slowly see a shift in the brothers' demeanor and moral character. Jannik steps up to the plate and starts to help his sister-in-law with household duties, begins to serve as a surrogate father of sorts for his nieces, and eventually finds work as a handyman. Michael, on the other hand, is scarred, perhaps irrevocably, from his experience abroad. I won't give away the various plot twists that make for the meat of this film, but suffice it to say that Michael no longer can claim a moral high ground at the end. In more ways than one, he begins to resemble the Jannik of days past.

So what does Brothers have to say about moral development and change? On the one hand, Bier doesn't take the radical approach of Run Lola Run. The characters' lives are not altered solely by random, external factors; they react to their circumstances, make choices, and affect some sort of outcome with some degree of agency. On the other hand, the changes that Michael and Jannik undergo are precipitated by a large, external event over which they have no control: the former's deployment overseas. Without this major change in their lives (or at least a major change), it would have been hard to imagine how either of them would modify their behavior and motivations. Bier's movie implies that we are not as ingrained in our ways as Cronenberg's A History of Violence would suggest; events outside ourselves easily can make heroes or monsters of us all.

At its most basic level, then, Brothers simply teaches us about hope and humility. It implies that hard cases like Jannik can improve substantially while seemingly "good" people like Michael can deteriorate, given the "right" circumstances. Brothers cautions us to be conscious of our fickle psyches that are prone to quick, adverse shifts. In many respects, Michael's wife, Sarah, proves to be the most level-headed character: observing, studying, and sympathizing with the two men (as well as her daughters). Her level of calm and awareness (both self- and other-directed) are remarkable, given the tumult in her life; in many ways, she serves as the film's emotional anchor.

Thus, I highly recommend Brothers, a moving, tragic, and believable portrait of how our moral lives are easily affected by external circumstances, particularly major ones.

Postscript

I cannot help but speculate about whether Brothers foresaw—unintentionally, perhaps—European unease about the peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan. Taliban fighters currently appear resurgent in the southern part of the country, and NATO recently had difficulty recruiting fresh troops from member countries. Perhaps the movie's analysis of the effects of war on both soldiers and their families reflects an underlying anxiety (and perhaps anti-war resistance) across the Atlantic.