Brotherhood

Thin Line Between Love and Hate: Thure Lindhardt and David Dencik in Brotherhood
 
Time Investment: 90 min.
Return on Investment: 75 min.
 
I would love to have been in the pitch meeting for the new gay indie Brotherhood (Olive Films). “Okay, so it’s got the tender love story of Brokeback Mountain mixed with the aggressive hatred of American History X!” But you can’t be too surprised by Brotherhood’s rather extreme setting— it comes from Denmark, the land of filmmakers like Lars von Trier and Susanne Bier, who have mastered the fine line between the public’s taste for compassion and for violence. And, like those masters of Dogma 95 cinema, filmmaker Nicolo Donato actually pulls off what seems a little far-fetched on paper: a delicate, passionate and successful modern tragedy. (No happy endings here, folks!)
 
Having left the army after being accused of groping his men, blond and blue-eyed Army sergeant Lars reluctantly begins to hang around his hometown’s local Neo-Nazi group—first out of boredom, then to prove his masculinity and refute rumors about his sexual orientation, and finally because of his growing feelings towards the group’s second-in-command, Jimmy.
 
Thankfully, the film never excuses the group’s extreme beliefs. (They’re still neo-Nazis, after all, even if they do want to fuck each other). Even so, it’s hard to root for a happy ending. While Brotherhood teeters on the edge of melodrama, it offers a quiet and intense illustration of how hatred is often born out of insecurity (homophobes often harbor unwanted gay feelings themselves) and how we can twist it into a driving force to fuel false ideologies. —Benjamin Solomon