Broderskab

... or was it the other way around? Not in this well written and acted film BROTHERHOOD, where two natural events are not tolerated just because THEY told them so, globalization and honest feelings. The beautiful saying "live and let live" has no meaning for so many in this ever growing and shifting global society or the sadistic skinheads and members of this Danish brotherhood.

Gone are the days when countries were separated by well-guarded borders or when you were supposed to be whatever your religion, family or community wanted you to be. It is a lost cause, but THEY still fight it with venom like hate and gruesome violence.

At first you are led to believe that the title of the film is referring to the group where a premium membership is difficult to get, but latter you discover the true meaning of brotherhood or betrayed brotherhood. There were moments during the film when I forgot to respire, I forgot where I am or what time it was, finding myself wanting to turn away from the screen for a second hoping to protect myself from the violent blows or the delightfully true moments of beauty and love of the two protagonist. Repressing your feeling is possible only for a short period of time and we all do this on a regular basis, but when it come down to our biological necessity, what we call LOVE, sooner or latter it will erupt, explode, gush out and NOT gently but with dire consequences.

Brotherhood is an important film on so many levels for individuals and society in general especially for those living with "stuck in ancient times" mentality. Humankind evolves with lightning speed and "some" people should evolve with it, but unfortunately dogma, personal feelings, opinions are huge obstacles, creating violence and unnecessary hurt. For me this great film has an important message: Let people love and be true to themselves because it has nothing to do with you or the ills of the world and if you oppose this natural feeling, YOU are an obstacle to humanity and the beautiful progression nature created for us to "live life" as it should be lived.

Ah, the magic and confusing explosive mixture of machismo and sexuality!!! There is no other institution with such discomfort at the mention of homosexuality, than the military. It certainly makes a lot of sense. If your purpose is spilling of the blood, what do you do with arousal and men loving ? Well, the skinheads are based on the same false patriotic and quasi-military principals. Shaved heads, extremely tight pants, loud music, cheap beer, and almost exclusively male company.No surprise than, that Lars and Jimmy hit it off so well nor that it ended so badly. Nothing filthier than moronic notions of purity, racial or sexual. The nature of humankind is exactly the lack of purity and aching imperfection of us all. Whenever you try to take that away, you destroy the essence of our existence.where do you go after that?

As soon as a movie starts, I start thinking about how I'm going to review it. For the first 40 minutes, I thought I was going to throw this movie in the gutter where it belonged when I reviewed it, because for all that time there's practically nothing but revolting Nazi crap. It's very, very hard to sit through. The first scene is the violent beating of a cruising gay man by a skinhead who had come on to him and told him how beautiful he was before calling out his gang to beat and kick the guy to a pulp (an incident that re-enters the story significantly near the end).

After that are long scenes of the ugly Nazis (the men are physically as well as morally ugly) spewing their toxic garbage into my ears where it was not welcome. But then... ah, then... at about the 41-minute mark, Lars and Jimmy start looking at each other in a new way, and EVERYTHING changes. The first 40 minutes of hateful garbage are well worth suffering through to get to that exquisite tenderness and passion.

Thure Lindhardt as Lars is a gentle, enormously attractive beauty from his first scene to his last, but the character is pretty flat: steady and strong but not very interesting. David Dencik got the meaty role in Jimmy, and he pulls it off brilliantly. He is completely believable both as the bitter, arrogant, brutal Nazi homophobe and as the sweet, gentle, deeply vulnerable and passionate man who eventually emerges from that hateful shell. If the first third of the movie had not been so revolting, Jimmy's emergence from that horrible world would not have been so marvelous. And it IS marvelous, some of the loveliest acting I have ever seen.

Raw, naked, totally defenseless vulnerability is something rarely seen in movies, particularly from male actors. In fact the ONLY previous example that comes to mind is Jane Fonda fairly early in her career - in Klute and even more powerfully earlier in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Fonda, in both those roles, had been beaten down by a cruel system she was helpless against; but Dencik is breaking out - against his own will - from within an even more brutal system in which he has been on top and on which he has been completely dependent for his identity.

He discovers that he's just like the guys he's been attacking, and that discovery shatters him. It shatters him, but it finally begins to set him free to be himself for the first time. It's a very great performance that makes an otherwise mediocre movie (deeply offensive when it's not simply unbelievable) well worth watching. The transformation just in his eyes is astonishing. All eight stars are for him.

This is a very strong movie in many respects. It has a compelling and very strong story to tell, concerning subjects of great importance, and in many ways, as the movie shows, very contradictory. It has at least four very strong performances by both of the two leading characters (David Dencik and Thure Lindhardt) and some of the supporting characters (especially Nicolas Bro and Morten Holst). It contains some very strong but also very different situations of on one hand very strong violence and on the other hand strong love and passion. One of the biggest strengths of this movie is, imo that a lot of things are never said, but only hinted at or shown by facial expressions, gestures or in some cases simply silence. Those elements added makes it a movie worth watching - if you have the stomach for it! I for one must say that the last 15 minutes of the movie left me with a very cold and very unpleasant feeling, that I have not yet been able to shake completely off two days later!

at first sigh, a strange , unrealistic story. at the second, a good job. in fact, only a hypothesis about a men click and the clash between feelings and ideology. not new idea but used in wise manner. cold, cruel, with subtle references to Greek mythology, Brotherhood has a lot of virtues. the acting, the script, the set, the atmosphere, the not comfortable situations, the culture of hate against an exotic form of heresy. a film who propose a bitter subject who could not be represented only by gay relation but the manner to define the pillars of national identity, the courage and the national virtues. a film about a group and its broken rules. and a brilliant art of exploration of details.