BROTHERS’ NEST
Fantasia 2018 Film Festival Review
By Jeff Sanders
Imagine if the farm-folk from BABE found themselves trapped in the film FARGO and you can start to feel the dreary tone of this dark drama disguised a black comedy. These are likable people who are about to make some very bad decisions in a film where I found myself profoundly disturbed. This is a movie, but I, unfortunately, feel that the events that take place onscreen are only inferred as such because they were filmed with the lens of a camera instead of our eye.
We hear about stories such as this one out of the local news: two brothers attempt to kill their family for an inheritance claim. This seems fake, our friends and neighbors wouldn’t do that? But we know in there lies truth, people will do awful things when they find themselves in a compromised situation, usually involving finances, claim, or both. It’s there, as Clayton Jacobson puts it in the film: no money, or some money, we want more. What’s more? These brothers are not only in need of money, they also have claim. The family house, of course, a horse, as well, their dead father’s possessions, their stepfather’s possessions, but more than any of this, they want to claim a different life. They don’t want to be who they are. Divorced, out of shape, lonely, living in a trailer park. They want to come from a different family. One where their father didn’t commit suicide and where their mother is not going to die. One where their stepfather loved them. Nobody ever loved them. Jeff and Terry are in this world alone and feel justified in their insane scheme to kill their stepfather and make it look like a suicide so that they can set their claim back to normalcy. Take what was theirs’ before their mother signed it all away. It’s all about how you perceive it.
That’s where I find myself most impressed by the film. This is a film about perception. This is a film about a man named Jeff (Clayton Jacobson, also the film’s director), who has projected so many bad thoughts towards his family that he now has a skewed sense of history that may or may not have happened. He claims his stepfather, Roger (Kym Gyngell) never loved him, was inaccessible, choosing to tinker with his old radios that he restored instead of paying attention to the boys. This sounds like a truncated version of a complex story, and it is. This is what our mind does to history when we blind it with anger. We only remember simple pieces that shape what we want to keep. We know this can’t be completely true with Jeff, after all, when his younger brother Terry (Shane Jacobson) asks Roger point blank about their mother having an affair with him and if he was relieved when his dad killed himself. Roger recognizes that Terry is upset and responds in kind with authenticity in a deep way, “That was tricky business.” That is the way that things are in history, where pain, sadness, and love can all be intertwined in such a way that it can only be referred to as “tricky”. Where things are so complex when looked at in hindsight that we can literally choose to be angry or happy. Jeff has chosen to be angry. He has convinced his brother Terry to go along with him, at least for the time being. Terry may still have his own way of looking at things.
BROTHERS’ NEST is the best noir thriller of the year, low budget and without any unnecessary thrills or frills. Clayton Jacobson is a very good director, with a nice eye for staging violence and character in a way like the Coen Brothers. He reminds us of the human element every time a trigger is pulled from both the recipient and the executioner. Clayton is also a very good actor as Jeff, as is his brother Shane as Terry, whom we have seen strong performances from in KENNY (their previous collaboration) and ANIMAL KINGDOM. Fans of noir and dark comedy put this one on your radar. This is dark, disturbing stuff that has some serious resonance reminiscent of films like FARGO, THE HONEYMOON KILLERS, A SIMPLE PLAN and BLOOD SIMPLE.
