Brothers

A Danish officer, operating with the United Nations peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan, disappears when the helicopter he was flying in is shot down. He is reported dead, but in reality spends months imprisoned in a Taliban fighters’ camp. His younger brother Jannik is the black sheep of the family. He has not yet found his place in the world, unless it happens to be jail. After Michael disappears, Jannik offers to help his wife Sarah and their daughters, a role that makes him grow up. To the surprise of both of them, Jannik and Sarah start to feel attracted to each other. Then the traumatised Michael is freed from the Taliban camp. Everyone has moved on and no one can return to where they were. That is a brief summary of Susanne Bier’s eighth feature Brothers, one of the largest box-office hits of the year in Denmark. Based on a script that Bier wrote together with the prolific Anders Thomas Jensen (Mifune’s Last Song, Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself), the film brings to life in a moving way the emotions and dilemmas of all those involved. Bier had already shown with her Dogma film Open Hearts that she knows how to deal with actors; Ulrik Thomsen excels as the self-assured and later unspeakably damaged soldier, but also ‘Hollywood star’ Connie Nielsen (in her first Danish-language film role) is wonderful as Sarah. (GT)