Past lives

One of the very best films I’ve seen this year – perhaps the best. A perfectly handled love-triangle, where the perfection lies in nothing changing: the existing relationships remain as they are – no marriages ruined, no friendships shattered. Everything is respected, everything held in tension. In the final scene (with which the film, stunningly, also opens), any one of the three protagonists could have destroyed everything by going off on one; instead they all three, separately, hold it together.

The final tears from the woman are the exception that proves the rule, an incident which reveals the intensity of emotion in all three, but which damages nothing, as they come after the successful non-event.

Brother

The trailer scared me with the hero Michael’s older brother (Francis) getting his sibling to climb an electricity pylon, exhorting him to follow his every move exactly, to avoid getting electrocuted. At the end of the film you see them at the top. But the metaphor is a good one for two Black boys growing up in this part of Toronto. A foot (or hand) wrong and that’s it. Their mother Ruth plays a similar role to Francis in the strong care she has for her sons.

For Deadline Hollywood, Valerie Complex wrote that “Brother is a film that reaffirms why I love movies. The narrative asks so many vital questions about Black life and masculinity, but most of all: If Black boys are raising themselves to adulthood, where do they turn for support? This is the ultimate dilemma Francis and Michael find themselves in. Brother isn’t just another “Black” film. This is a vital piece of cinema that hasn’t received the buzz it deserves. I don’t want to see this fly under the radar, and I hope others will be open-minded enough to witness the genius of Clement Virgo and these young actors.”

How they are related

The strength and resolve which Francis shows in his care for his younger brother reminds me of that shown by all three protagonists in Past Lives. Both films are (yuk) testimonies to the power of the human spirit to persevere in kindness. In both, a foot wrong was all it would have taken.

Both films also handle absence in contrary ways: in Past Lives, it’s the return of presence (of her childhood friend) which threatens to destroy her current life; in Brother it’s Francis’s absence which throws Michael and Ruth’s lives into instability.