The Sister Brothers Sibling Bond
In a dark desert mountain setting the opening scene of The Sister Brothers, illuminated mostly by gun fire, a rapid volley of firecracker light that elucidates nothing but that a gun fight is afoot. Two assassins rush several men in a cabin, killing every one. Joaquin Phoenix (Charlie) and John C. Reilly (Eli) are the Sisters brothers. Two assassins hired by a mysterious and obvious incarnation of a “robber baron” to assassinate some mysterious man for some mysterious reason. The brother’s employer, known as “the Commodore,” is accurately credited as ‘With participation by Rutger Hauer’ as he never audibly speaks.
The opening scene establishes early on the brutality that pervades the Sister brothers assassinations. There are plenty of these brutal killings throughout the film but in between are moments of genuine sweetness, compassion and communion. Even when the two brothers have managed to get on each others last nerve, their affection for each other is ever so apparent. Still, the brothers inhabit a brutal world.
A world where venomous spiders creep into the mouths of those asleep and poison the tongue. Where abusive fathers commit unspeakable acts. American dreams are met with the harsh reality of a brutal world. It is interesting a French director (Jacques Adiard) in his first English language film captures this so nicely. Spaghetti westerns, make way for the French fry western.
As the two brothers make their journey we slowly learn that they are to meet with a scout sent ahead by the Commodore. He waits for the Sister brothers to arrive so they can do what they were hired to do. Their mission is to extract this mysterious man’s secret before killing him. Jake Gyllenhall is John Morris the scout who re-teams with Riz Ahmed (from Nightcrawler), the mysterious man (Hermann Kermit Warm) he watches.
Morris knows little to nothing about the man he’s been hired to locate and investigate. Warm soon introduces himself to Gyllenhall and the two begin to form a genuine friendship. Ahmed is a chemist who has created a compound that illuminates the gold in rivers and has been on his way to California to pan for gold. To partake in his somewhat twisted share of the American Dream.
He dreams of using his fortune to found a socialist Utopia in Dallas, Texas.. It appears as if Morris is buying into this vision of a better world, but Warm has determined he’s not as noble as he seems. Morris, however, is that noble and knowing the Sisters brothers and what they do, decides to help Warm escape his certain doom. The Sister brothers soon figure this out. It appears as if this Western will, as Western’s tend to do, lead to an ultimate showdown between villains and heroes, but this is brutal world.
These are likable people and being people, they don’t always act the way one might suspect. Plenty of violence ensues but instead of an ultimate showdown between heroes and villains, we watch the villains join the heroes in a quest to obtain some version of the American Dream. In the end, it is a mixture of greed and tragic incompetence that undoes our heroes and shame our villains. The Sisters Brother’s is maybe more about the American nightmare.
The re-teaming of Gyllenhall and Ahmed (Nightcrawler) is a genuine pleasure but this is Phoenix and Riley’s film. What a pair these two are! Eli is the older brother who has long lived with regret. Regret it was never he that put an end to their father’s unspeakable abuse and was instead his little brother Charlie who did the deed. This regret has compelled Riley to look after the reckless wanton killer who has become Charlie.
Eli isn’t any drink of sarsaparilla and is every bit as deadly, perhaps even more than his little brother. There are several reasons Jaoquim Phoenix is such a revered actor and of the many reasons his willingness to let other actors command the screen. Phoenix lurks about in the shadow of Riely’s performance, sulking, skulking and mumbling while Riley articulates, through script and subtext the complexity of their relationship, and their deeds. The Sisters Brothers is not a typical western nor is it atypical, it is just slightly off and all the better for it.