Brother – a melancholic masterpiece about identity and brokenness (Queen’s Film Theatre until Thursday 21 September)

Francis might get beaten black and blue and experience prejudice from all and sundry on the street, but the most hurtful attacks are probably from the mouth of his mother. An immigrant from the Caribbean, Ruth has worked hard to bring her two sons up in Scarborough, a district of Toronto.

Clement Virgo’s Brother is no cookie-cutter exploration of identity and insecurity. It flicks between timelines with great confidence that the script and the actors will keep the audience connected with the picture that’s building up of the relationships and lives being portrayed. Switching between younger and older actors playing the same characters is often jarring. The casting and direction in Brother makes it seamless.

Francis (played by young Jacob Williams/older Aaron Pierre) excels as the outwardly confident older sibling. He has the talent to become a music producer, but few of the opportunities. He dotes on his mum (Marsha Stephanie Blake), acts as protector of younger Michael (David Odion/Lamar Johnson), and resents being infantilised at home.

Into this tight single parent home steps Aisha (Delia Lisette Chambers/Kiana Madeira), the daughter of a local shop owner and the apple of Michael’s eye. She grows up and becomes a peripatetic programmer who escapes the confines of the claustrophobic world of Scarborough and eventually returns to it with an outsider’s perspective. Her patience with Michael is almost serene as he struggles to make sense of loss and shrugs off her love and care. The late arrival of Francis’ boyfriend Jelly (Lovell Adams-Gray) into the narrative adds to the audience’s understanding of what actually matters to the fraught matriarch.

The cinematography is distinctive with a great reveal during the opening scene – don’t try this at home – as the brothers climb up an electric pylon, accompanied with the ominous high voltage hum (an ongoing metaphor for the struggle to rise up and get on in life). It’s quickly followed by a beautifully executed standing on the wrong side of the road waiting for someone to get off a bus shot.

The soundtrack becomes increasingly important to the plot, but songs like Curtis Mayfield’s We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue set the mood and explain the circumstances. The dialogue is stripped back. There are long dramatic silences in the family apartment that work on-screen despite being unnatural and unrealistic. The audience are treated like adults, expected to watch and feel what’s happening and what’s being thought rather than being spoon fed.

Brother is a melancholic masterpiece, upsetting and disturbing, a story of tormented souls that have been broken to such an extent that the warm love of angels like Aisha and Jelly isn’t really sufficient to heal the wounds. The film’s final lament by Nina Simone – Ne me quitte pas / Do not leave me – cements the tragedy.

Brother is being screened at Queen’s Film Theatre until Thursday 21 September.

 

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