Brother
Great performances feature in Clement Virgo’s tale of Jamaican brothers growing up in Canada.
Image courtesy of Curzon
What is good in this feature debut by the Canadian director Clement Virgo is exceptionally good and his film is one that will undoubtably appeal to those who admired 2017’s Oscar winner Moonlight. Nevertheless, those viewers able to make that comparison may well come to share my view that Brother for all its qualities is not in the same league as the film that Barry Jenkins gave us.
Brother is set in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough and is centred on a Jamaican family consisting of Ruth (Marsha Stephanie Blake) and her two sons, Francis and Michael. As with Moonlight the story told deals with growing up and covers a span of time. We see both boys as young children in the early 1980s and at this stage Francis the elder son is played by Jacob Williams and his brother Michael by David Odion. However, much of the piece takes place some ten years later and we see how protective Francis is of Michael but he is also ready to drop out of school to pursue his own interests – they include involvement in hip-hop music which is all the rage at the time. More concerning still, not least to Ruth, is the fact that Francis could easily make the wrong kind of friends. Not only are we made aware of gang rivalry in Scarborough but, no less than in the boys’ earlier days, the news on TV references black people who have been killed. This is all too relevant since the story will again move on in time and reveal the impact on Ruth of losing Francis (that he will die young is revealed early on in the film albeit without any details being disclosed then). What we see is how Ruth, once a strong and effective controlling parent, becomes traumatised and often mute due to her loss. One other central figure is present in each of these periods: she is Aisha who has her eye on Michael when he is still a young child and who much later becomes his girlfriend and companion (the older Aisha is played by Kiana Madeira).
The screenplay, an adaptation of the novel by David Chariandy, is by Virgo himself and it is very successful in bringing the characters to life. Furthermore, the two leading actors – Lamar Johnson as Michael and Aaron Pierre as Francis - are first class and especially successful in capturing the spirit of siblings who are close despite being in many ways contrasted (Michael is the more obviously vulnerable, Francis the assertive one stubborn enough to let this side of his nature lead him into danger). Although these are the performances that stand out, Blake and Madeira are excellent too.
This is undoubtedly a tale which, whether approached as a portrayal of adolescence in a racist setting or as a study of a sibling bond, is both believable and sympathetic. Shot in widescreen and colour by Guy Godfree, Brother invites us to understand the atmosphere in which the brothers grow up: it is tellingly and naturalistically captured but that in itself leads one to question the opening scene in which Francis guides Michael in a dangerous climb up an electrical pylon. Even at the start this comes over as a rather too obvious metaphor for the inherent struggle and danger faced by black boys in America wanting to get to the top. That the film returns to this moment more than once only underlines further the fact that stylistically at least it does not really fit in.
That, however, is a minor misjudgment. What is far more problematic is the fact that, in contrast to Moonlight which offered its three-part narrative in consecutive sequence, Virgo opts to move back and forth in time throughout the movie. It’s easy enough to tell at any given point which time slot we are in, but the frequency of the jumps back and forth distract and that discourages close identification with the unfolding narrative. Instead it makes us feel like observers who are constantly needing to reset our focus and Virgo adds to that by further playing around with time within a particular period. A notable example of this comes when we finally do see what happened to Francis and the incident is followed by a stylised treatment of his funeral after which the film cuts back to show his death.
If this approach does not serve the story well, it must also be said that the film comes to seem overextended and then ends with a big set piece, one that plays out against Nina Simone’s recording of the Jacques Brel song ‘Ne me quitte pas.’ This is a sequence which stylistically seems to belong to a different kind of film altogether. Think back to Moonlight and you know which film had consistency and sureness of touch. But, despite my reservations, Brother remains a film admirable in intent and one that will surely earn awards for its leading actors and rightly so.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Lamar Johnson, Aaron Pierre, Marsha Stephanie Blake, Kiana Madeira, Lovell Adams-Gray, David Odion, Jacob Williams, Delia Lisette Chambers, Taveeta Szymanowicz, Evan Buliung, Alsseny Camara.
Dir Clement Virgo, Pro Damon D’Oliveira, Aeschylus Poulos, Sonya Di Rienzo and Clement Virgo, Screenplay Clement Virgo, from the novel by David Chariandy, Ph Guy Godfree, Pro Des Jason Clarke, Ed Kye Meechan, Music Todor Kobakov, Costumes Hanna Puley.
Conquering Lion Pictures/Hawkeye Pictures-Curzon.
120 mins. Canada. 2022. US Rel: 4 August 2023. UK Rel: 15 September 2023. Cert. 15.
