The Brothers Bloom

[adrienmundi]

I've always had issues with caper movies; I love them, and I hate them. I love the idea of being taken in, of being cleverly led along, to get everything at the end when the twist is revealed to the protagonist; I desperately want that suspension of disbelief. But unfortunately, by a combination of training, reinforcement and maybe a base predilection, the part of my brain that's always on, that always looks for flaws, clues, the underlying narrative substructure isn't down with the idea of suspension of anything. That's not to say I haven't enjoyed caper movies; I have. But what I enjoy is, I imagine, secondary to the primary, intended stringing along of the audience; I enjoy watching what I suspect will unfold grow and fill in with particulars, see the steps between when I get it and the end connect. I guess it's like watching the plot progress from two ends at once, from the "a ha!" moment and from the end.

But The Brothers Bloom was different. Like I described it to fairyhead, it's like The Spanish Prisoner* with a heart. It's so genuinely warm, full of twisted, quirky, well meaning love and idiosyncrasy that it engages the always on structuralist, and rewards it for paying attention and being right, even as it engages the part of me that wants to sit back, put my trust in the writer/director and be entertained. Standard caper movies are so taken with their own byzantine twists and clever staging that there's nothing behind that; once you see through, you see it all. Here, once you see through, though, it's still just so damned engaging and fun that I anticipated the turns to get to the destination.

The cast was stellar, and the director managed to get a series of really great performances from already talented and pretty actors. Really, I can't recommend this movie highly enough. It made a jaded caper film cynic like me laugh and smile all the way through in genuine delight.




*the best caper movie I'd seen to date, despite it's (admittedly, deserved) being taken with it's own terrible cleverness

Comments

[kittenspeaks.livejournal.com]

I watched it last week and had to comment that it made me even more smitten for Adrien Brody.
It is a brilliant movie.And I love the visual timelessness to it. Well, I don't know if "timelessness" is the right word. More like "out of time line"...