Brother (1997)
Directed and written by Aleksey Balabanov
Produced by Sergey Selyanov
Starring Sergey Bodrov, Yuriy Kuznetsov, Svetlana Pismichenko, Viktor Sukhorukov, Mariya Zhukova, Vyacheslav Butusov, Irina Rakshina, Sergey Murzin, Tatyana Zakharova
“I knew wherever I was that you thought of me, and if I got in a tight place you would come – if alive.”
–William Tecumseh Sherman, letter to Ulysses S. Grant, 1864.3.10
Not to be confused with Kitano’s underwhelming, cross-cultural Yakuza flick shot stateside a few years later, Balabanov’s grimy crime drama was a domestic hit as much for its depiction of Russia’s chaotic zeitgeist as its crafty economy. At the insistence of their mother (Zakharova), a tough, resourceful young veteran (Bodrov) of the First Chechen War peregrinates to St. Petersburg to reunite with his big brother (Sukhorukov), a freelance assassin employed by local gangsters. For his enterprise, martial invention and tactical cunning, he betters his sibling’s success as a slippery gun for hire, but soon finds that urban life is as spiritually insidious as remuneratory. When he isn’t greasing culprits of low character, the gifted gunsel beds a battered housewife (Pismichenko), troops with a trendy druggie (Zhukova) and an aging, weathered, German chapman (Kuznetsov) who resides in a Lutheran cemetery, and fixates on, attends a performance by and encounters at a party his new favorite band, Nautilus Pompilius, who provide most of the picture’s music. Armed to kill with discrimination checked by rectitude and a CD steadily spinning waist-high in his Discman (an accessory of any upright young man in the ’90s), Bodrov’s felon is for his farouche humor, adaptability, fraternal fidelity and uncertain circumstances an embodiment of the plights and pertinacity that typified the ethos of young Russians during their nation’s post-Soviet tumult. Practiced portrayals and St. Petersburg’s backdrop contribute to this little landmark’s plausibility, but its youthful audiences came for excitement and returned to see one of their own heroized for a principled criminality.
Recommended for a double feature paired with Three Days of the Condor, Le choc or Brother 2.
1 thought on “Palatable: Brother”