Brothers

On the same day his feckless brother Jannik (Kaas) gets out of prison, upstanding pillar of the community Michael (Thomsen) heads off to Afghanistan as a major in the Danish army, leaving behind his wife Sarah (Nielsen) and two daughters. When Michael's helicopter crashes with no survivors, Jannik and Sarah gravitate towards one another for comfort. On paper, the plot of Brothers sounds like a melodramatic pot-boiler, but this film is a far more subtle affair than the bare bones of its story might suggest. The three central performances are excellent (as it happens relatively early in the film, it's no spoiler to say that Michael survives the helicopter crash), but there are other relationships at play here too, particularly that of Jannik trying to relate to his contemptuous father, and the contrast with Jannik's crude attempts at being a father and Michael's relationship with his daughters when he returns - psychologically damaged - from the war. Director Susanne Bier co-wrote with Thomas Anders Jensen, and their script is beautifully detailed: Sarah ironing her dead husband's shirts; Michael rearranging the kitchen crockery to the way it was before he went away; cinematographer Morton Soborg's delicate use of colour; Jannik's clumsy fumbling for an emotional connection with his father, only to be rebuffed with: "I don't want to hear any more bullshit!" Emotionally charged, as shocking as it is touching, and never less than rigorously unsentimental, Brothers is a superb film.