E-Mail This Article to a Friend BROTHERS

So this is what’s become of Dogme 95 — a tepid melodrama with psychological and political pretenses. Although director Susanne Bier did receive a Dogme certificate of purity for her previous feature, Open Hearts, this one has arty trappings: iris shots: shots of an exploding helicopter: superimposed montages of waving grass, human eyes, and desert landscapes meant to express angst, longing, and irony. The brothers of the title are Michael (Ulrich Thomsen), a major in the Danish army off to rebuild Afghanistan, and Jannik (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), his black-sheep sibling, who gets out of prison the same day Michael is shipped off. The little party the family throws for both reveals that Jannik has a lot of ground to make up. He gets his chance when Michael is declared dead after his chopper goes down and Jannik completes the new kitchen Michael left unfinished and bonds with Michael’s wife and two daughters. Of course, Michael is still alive! To remain so, however, he has to do something naughty while in the custody of the Taliban (the War on Terror as plot device), and when he returns, he projects his guilt onto his family. Plodding and predictable, Brothers turns Dogme into routine. In Danish with English subtitles. (110 minutes)