BROTHER (2001)

Kitano breaks down all barriers

Continuing Takeshi Kitano's obsession with the code of yakuza loyalty and belonging while simultaneously making the most of its stranger in a strange land premise, Brother boldly juxtaposes images of geographical displacement and transience with underlying themes of cultural permanence and immutability. One that crafts a new vs old world, brother against brother epic battle straddling both sides of the Pacific style narrative without compromising the stylistic beauty of Kitano's other works. To Kitano, LA appears to have no indigenous culture of its own; he portrays it as nothing but a blank space on which immigrant Japanese, Italians, Africans and Hispanics do battle for supremacy, apparently unencumbered by the laws and customs of America. Although seemingly eager to embrace the shoot-outs of old Westerns, Kitano's screen blows hit home most painfully when he allows us to observe the conflict between assailant and victim at close quarters, as in the wince-inducing scene when Yamamoto grazes Denny's eye with a broken bottle. These encounters invoke the spectre of samurai sword fights rather than frontier shoot-outs is where Kitano's talent for provocative, confrontational filmmaking is pushed to the forefront. Kitano's face, alternately warm and chilly, weatherbeaten and oddly expressive despite its partial paralysis, speaks clearly in any language. It makes his relationship with a very underrated Omar Epps all the more special, these men don't share a common tongue but you can see the development of their relationship as naturally as anyone else. It's a very well-acted film and Kitano's script succeeds in creating likeable characters with the minimum amount of dialogue possible, a talent the man has seemingly never lost. Elsewhere, Kitano's distinctive blend of aggressive visuals and the lyrical, elegiac scoring of his regular composer Joe Hisaishi raise the tone from the sensational to the spiritual, reminding me of Sonatine's haunting mix of music and mayhem. Despite Kitano's own reservations, I highly recommend you give Brother a go, laid back yet rougher than most would expect, it's loud, direct and completely uncompromised, expressing more without words than most directors would dare to achieve.

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