Review by
Ren Zelen
Directed by: Jacques Audiard
Starring: John C. Reilly, Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz
Ahmed, Rebecca Root, Allison Tolman, Rutger Hauer, Carol Kane
For his English-language feature debut, French director
Jacques Audiard has taken on a thoroughly American genre, the
Western. The Sisters Brothers has been adapted by Audiard and
long-time co-writer Thomas Bidegain from the Booker-shortlisted novel
by Patrick DeWitt and stars John C Reilly as Eli Sisters and
Joaquin Phoenix as Charlie Sisters.
The Sisters brothers are two guns-for-hire in 1850s Oregon at the height of
the Gold Rush. They are bounty hunters, wranglers, assassins – they do
whatever shady work is necessary for a rich, ruthless businessman and
crime-lord known as ‘the Commodore’ (Rutger Hauer).
Their latest task is to obtain certain valuable information from chemist
and inventor, Hermann Kermit Warm (Riz Ahmed), by whatever means
necessary. However, the Commodore has enlisted the help of a genteel but
efficient private detective, John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal), to go
ahead of the brothers in order to track down their victim, who has gone on
the run.
Morris travels a few days’ ride ahead of the brothers and sends frequent
dispatches outlining his progress. Charlie Sisters finds the formal,
educated style of Morris’s letters rather irritating, annoyed at being told
where to go and what to do by what he imagines to be an overly pretentious
gentleman.
The brothers know better than to question their orders from the Commodore -
as far as they’re concerned, Warm is a thieving enemy who has betrayed their
boss. However, when Morris finally meets and befriends Hermann Warm, he
finds a man of quick mind who is humane and decent.
It is then that the two pairs of men set out on somewhat different paths,
and we start to realise that the underlying drama of
The Sisters Brothers lies in how these four very distinct
characters might arrive at loggerheads with each other, or possibly find
common ground.
When the men learn that the Commodore is in pursuit of Warm because he
covets a chemical formula that he has discovered, and the useful nature of
this formula is revealed, the prospect of potential wealth makes the
brothers quickly readjust their priorities. However, the Commodore does not
take kindly to being thwarted, and it isn’t long before Eli and Charlie find
that he has sent a posse out to track them down too.
The Sisters Brothers suggests that there are two kinds of men in the world of this Western - those who embrace the need for civilising elements (such as toothbrushes) and those who still believe that alcohol and self-indulgence are the answer to all ills. In opposition to Gyllenhaal’s urbane, educated Morris and the progressive scientific humanism of Ahmed’s Warm, is Phoenix’s Charlie Sisters – a brutal, trigger-happy throwback to the lawless West – who has drunken gunfights and is keen to cultivate a reputation for violence.
Somewhere between both camps is Reilly’s Eli, still haunted by memories of
the brothers’ abusive father and who is tiring of a life of brutality and
lovelessness. Eli is beginning to yearn after something more stable and
satisfying, symbolised by his wonder in discovering toothpaste and the
concept of dental hygiene, which he then willingly adopts.
It is a film about a cat-and-mouse chase infused with violence and body
horror – but it is also a bittersweet examination of family ties and
unexpected alliances. Each of the characters is sensitively outlined and
beautifully played. Gyllenhaal imbues the cultured, scholarly Morris with a
thoughtful melancholy, while Ahmed plays Warm in a way which exemplifies his
name.
The Sisters Brothers is a refreshingly original yet knowing
homage to the Western genre. Audiard (A Prophet, 2009; Rust and Bone, 2012) takes familiar elements - shootouts, grubby saloons, liquor-soaked
outlaws, ruthless bullies - and, with his characteristically sensitive
touch, reinvents them in witty but also moving and tragic ways, taking time
to examine the hopes, dreams and failings of his distinctive central
characters.
The Sisters Brothers is on Netflix
UK/ROI now.