BLOOD BROTHERS
by Chris Dashiell

The tragic force of vendetta, ancient feuds between or within families that take on a life of their own—this is a well-worn dramatic theme. The trick is to convey the tangible, real life experience of all this, as it might occur just down the street. In the case of Shotgun Stories, the debut feature of young writer-director Jeff Nichols, down the street is a small, out-of-the-way town in Arkansas cotton country.

Son Hayes (Michael Shannon) is a lanky young man of few words who is trying to get out of his dead-end net-fishing job by becoming a card sharp. His back shows buckshot marks, which causes debate in the town about how he got them, but his deep-set eyes reveal emotional scars as well. As the story begins, his wife has walked out because he’s blown 200 dollars on cards. His younger brother Kid (Barlow Jacobs) is living in a tent in Son’s yard. His other brother, Boy (Douglas Ligon) lives in a van and barely gets by with a job coaching the local high school basketball team.

It appears that Son has assumed the role of patriarch, since their real father abandoned them years ago, remarried, became a Christian, and started a whole new family across town. When they hear that their father has died, Son goes to the funeral with his brothers and speaks his mind about the dead man, spitting on the coffin to emphasize his point. There’s a rough poetic courage at work here, but naturally it makes the four sons of the father’s other family angry. One of them decides to get back at Son, and this gradually escalates into a full-scale war between the two Hayes families.

Shotgun Stories is about the curse of hatred and revenge, and the ultimate futility of violence. It’s one of those small independent films that has more soul and more grit than most Hollywood productions ten times its size. The Southern gothic element here—as in the Tobacco Road-style names of Son, Boy, and Kid—is balanced by the modern ordinariness of the town atmosphere. A lot of the film’s first half is quietly funny, with the characters’ slow-moving habits and laconic conversational styles depicted spot-on, yet we never get the sense of looking down on the characters.

The movie gets more serious, evolving into a sharply observed and suspenseful piece of dark Americana. Nichols invests the film with feelings of dread and quiet gravity, aided by a distinctive score from the band Lucero. What really makes the film special, though, is the brooding, intense performance by Michael Shannon, a character actor who deserves to be better known. As the title suggests, the stories that are told about him don’t approach the real pain in this young man’s countenance.

My Brother is an Only Child, a film by Daniele Luchetti, is about a family in a small town in the 1960s and 1970s, with the conflict and rivalry between two brothers symbolizing the political divisions in Italy during that period. The older brother, Manrico (Riccardo Scamarcio) is very handsome and popular with women, and he’s also a fervent Communist. The younger one, Accio (Elio Germano) is lost in the shadow of his charismatic brother. He’s a mercurial character: moody, changeable, defiant, and sometimes obnoxious. First he goes to seminary to be a priest, but he’s not cut out for that. Then an older neighbor introduces him to the legacy of Mussolini, and he ends up joining the neofascist party, which puts him at complete odds with his brother and the rest of his family. At the same time he finds himself attracted to one of his brother’s girlfriends, Francesca (Diane Fleri), and this of course only increases the tension.

The story is based on a novel by Antonio Pennacchi, and what makes it interesting is that it’s the younger brother, the fascist, who is the main character. It’s remarkable how the film can focus on this very difficult person, who does some hateful things, and yet still evoke sympathy for him, and eventually some measure of understanding. And the main reason this works is because of the wonderful performance by Elio Germano, who projects great vitality, innocence, aggression, humor, and a kind of sad resignation as well. He resembles the young Robert De Niro in some ways, and his character matures in a believable way—much of the child remaining within the man.

The style of the picture, in keeping with these family saga-type films, is rather old-fashioned and romantic. It’s a film about working class people, and it has broad gestures and emotions. This tends to work to the picture’s detriment, giving it a somewhat ragged, episodic nature, although Luchetti is good at showing both the appeal and the repulsiveness of the fascist groups, while also taking satiric swipes at the Communist side. It’s interesting how the immaturity of family dynamics gets played out in the political realm, and the picture has a good feel for the messy realities of lower class Italian life. There’s also very fine work from Angela Finocchiaro as the tough family matriarch. It’s too diffuse to be considered great, but as a heartfelt portrait of a difficult time, it merits attention.

©2008 Chris Dashiell
CineScene