Broderskab

I rarely take the time to sit down and write a review after watching movies, but for Brotherhood I opted to make an exception. This movie was so wonderfully composed I hardly know where to begin. It had everything I look for in a movie, depth, superb acting, chemistry between characters, intriguing/thought provoking plot, and a well-choreographed cinematography.

Let's just start with the two main characters, Lars and Jimmy. I mentioned already that the two of them had great chemistry, and nowhere is that more apparent then in scenes where the two of them become intimate. There is a wonderful tenderness between the two that is communicated simply through body language and fleeting glances. You can tell exactly what they're thinking about one another with every glance.... the fear, hesitation, longing, it's all said without words. Beautifully done.

What makes the relationship between Lars and Jimmy even more striking is by having it take place against the backdrop of the intolerant Neo-Nazi organization that both men belong to. It adds a whole new sense of irony and suspense to the story, while also casting a looming sense of foreboding over their entire relationship.

You just know after watching the beginning scene (in which a gay man is brutally beaten into hospitalization by the brotherhood), that something terrible is going to happen to Jimmy and Lars if anyone ever finds out. I found myself biting my nails through the whole movie just hoping that they'd avoid that type of situation.

Unfortunately, there is a fair bit of violence at the end, but perhaps not from places you might expect it from initially. In any case, I felt more or less content with how the director chose to resolve the film. He didn't pretty anything up for us or give us a fairytale ending by any means, but he didn't completely crush our spirits either.

What he did do was deliver us a movie that was both deeply moving and tragically human. Mistakes were made, pain was delivered, betrayals were made, but intertwined throughout all the bad, there was beauty, compassion, acceptance, and love. It was a great movie and I would definitely recommend it to others without hesitation.

My one qualm with this movie has to do with Jimmy's background story. I would have liked just a bit more information as to what really motivated him to join the Aryan Brotherhood in the first place. Other than that, it was wonderful!

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!

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?

This is one of the most amazing films I have seen in past months. There are some many details that you have to take into account... The fact that the director tried to establish a parallel between the army and the neo Nazi group, the main character's parents push him aside and let him into the group. To me, it's all about the need of belonging, that need we all have as humans. Another interesting fact is that there are no frequent computers, no cellular phones, it almost makes the story timeless. Lars is really a Nordic character because he does not quit when faced with trouble.

So, If you take a deep look the film is powerful, full of knowledge, love, passion. It's so sad that sometimes we have to find strength, hope, love among those who cannot grow - parents, groups, enraged people.

This film is real just like pure emotions. They slide into you and make you human.

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.