The Brothers Bloom
Took me by surprise. Despite the good word of mouth, I still sort of expected to dislike this. In fact, the movie is full of things that outright tell me I should dislike it. The overwhelming matter-of-fact "quirkiness", the narrated storybook intro, on-the-nose dialogue that grated at parts. However, and I guess it's a good thing I've seen Brick to understand this, Johnson has such a fine control over all his wild cinematic formalism, that what should have come off as cheap and eye-rolling actually lands rather well.
The movie is often uproariously funny. Probably the most genuinely comical movie I've seen in theaters in years, and not in a shallow Apatow way that falls flat on its face after a second time. This is the type of humor that will survive multiple viewings. Yes, LMP, I do adore Bang Bang. I want her. My favorite moment in the film came when she and Stephen were playing shuffle-board in the steamship, and they suddenly attack and block one another with their shuffle-board stick things. Little details like this bring the film to life.
The performances are stellar across the board. I love Rachel Weisz and will continue to do so. Brody and Ruffalo feel like genuine family, and thankfully I really bought into the romance, which could have totally killed the movie had it failed. The con itself I could honestly care less about, but that's never what makes these types of movies really interesting anyway. You know things are going to twist and turn, and despite getting muddled here and there, the pure explicit plot of the movie is hardly what matters, much like the mystery in Brick. I didn't care, and don't need to to get the most out of the film.
Another thing many critics seem to flaw the film for is its derivative Wes Anderson-ness throughout much of the movie. I see it. Anderson is an unavoidably influential figure from the last decade of popular cinema, and has spawned countless unbearable knock-offs and copycats, most of which fail to capture any of Anderson's real storytelling finesse. I was afraid of this at first, as I mentioned before, but like other aspects of the movie, I soon came to think that Johnson, the ardent cinephile he is, clearly understands this influence and as such, I believe he's consciously riffing on Anderson here in parts. That said, I'd go so far as to say he even eclipses Anderson's work (aside from Tennenbaums maybe) in terms of richness of character and emotional exploration.
Of course, the big concept of the film, if you will, is storytelling itself: stories, storytellers, fiction and creation. It's a good meaty theme, and it's obviously something Johnson is really fascinated by, as evidenced by both this film and Brick. However, I think his realization of this theme is Bloom's biggest failing, and keeps me from really loving the movie. He almost got it there too, almost. I think maybe he's selling his audience a bit short in this respect, or maybe he felt the film was already so full of "stuff" that he really had to lay it on thick, but more subtlety would have gone a long way here. I think even just one more go over the screenplay would have solved this perfectly. The setup and resolution were perfect, and the development of the concept was nearly in place, but I really didn't need the characters themselves spelling the damn thing out for me every 25 minutes. Yeah guys, we get it, you're writing stories and making it real, but you can't live someone else's story, an unwritten life, yadda yadda yadda. Show us, don't tell us Rian. You do everything else here so well.
That said, the ending of the film is surprisingly beautiful and nails down that concept perfectly. So much so that it makes how he handles it through the rest of the film all the more upsetting. But yeah, amazing ending. More hilarious moments (more Bang Bang), a touching resolution to the romance, a bit of sadness, and some near sublime imagery to tie together all the disparate themes. The final 5 minutes of the movie really contains storytelling so rich and rewarding and beautiful I think it even surpasses the opening montage in Up personally.
Ultimately, I had a lot to write about this, obviously, and I'm remarkably satisfied. But like I said, I can't really love it like I want to. It's just so sloppy in that one aspect. I think I'll have to score it an 8/10 for that. Otherwise it might have been a 9 at least. It doesn't quite surpass Brick's precision and dumbfounding creativity, but I'm now anxiously awaiting Johnson's next film. He's done enough great work now to prove he's one of the country's most promising young filmmakers.
And yeah, I loved the Brick cameos in the beginning.
