Brothers/Brødre (2004) or, A Woman Came Between Them

♥♥♥♥

+ Worst Poster of the Year

It doesn't take a college degree to analyze plot information out of the poster for Susanne Bier's Brothers here

QUICK REVIEW:

A Danish officer is sent to Afghanistan, where he crashes down in a helicopter and is reported dead. At home, his violently convicted brother begins to bone the widow. But then the brother returns home...
Brødre is nowhere near the masterpiece that it was hailed as by much of the Danish press in '04. It is a contemporary melodrama that wallows in the heavy, fatal decisions of its main characters, but leaves you with no real intellectual baggage. The thing in Brødre that comes nearest to being that, - an idea that sticks after the film has ended, - is its protagonist's illustration that a murder inevitably destroys a person, and that is, especially in the context of war that Brødre navigates in, a rewrite of the truth. You can almost sense the womanly whimper through Brødre that all soldier veterans who have seen combat must subsequently become mentally handicapped, but the fact is that they do not. Man can, to a great extent, kill.
The (melo)drama of Brødre, however, works. Especially due to Ulrich Thomsen (The Celebration/Festen (1998)) as the returning, scarred brother, who plays phenomenally. But also the two girls that play his daughters, Sara Juel Werner (We Shall Overcome/Drømmen (2006)) and Rebecca Løgstrup (The Eagle/Ørnen (2006)) are great. The film has some humor, but also a terribly misplaced Niels Olsen (Danish comedic actor) in one part.
Aesthetically, Brødre is post-Dogme in the worst sense of the words; like a fall behind turd of the mostly 90s movement that thinks that extreme close-ups, hand-held and shaking camera are the highest form of cinematic expression.
Brødre was remade in America in 2009 by Jim Sheridan with the same title and stars Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhaal and Tobey Maguire.
This original version is directed by Susanne Bier, who won the Best Foreign Film Oscar a few years back for her In a Better World /Hævnen (2010), and is now finalizing her Serena with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. She is then bound for another Danish drama. Her best film is the drug-related drama about surviving terrible loss, Things We Lost in the Fire (2007) with Halle Berry and Benicio Del Toro.

Related post:

2004 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Watch the trailer for Brødre with English subtitles here

Budget: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown

What do you think of Brødre?
And of Bier and her movies?