Brother
Written and Directed by Clement Virgo
Starring Lamar Johnson, Aaron Pierre, Kiana Madeira, Lovell Adams-Gray, and Marsha Stephanie Blake
Unrated
Runtime: 120 mins.
In US theaters and on demand August 4

by Daniel Pecoraro, Contributor

There’s a scene in Brother, the Canadian independent feature based on the award-winning novel of the same name by David Chariandy, that essentially speaks for the whole film. About two-thirds of the way through, and silent except for a soundtrack of Curtis Mayfield’s “We the People Who Are Blacker than Blue,” this montage tracks the upbringing of the titular brothers, Francis (Aaron Pierre) and Michael (Lamar Johnson), by their mother Ruth (Marsha Stephanie Blake). Moments of joy and family connection amid working class troubles and anti-West Indian racism of Scarborough, Metro Toronto, in the 1980s and ‘90s. 

It exemplifies Brother not only because of its emotional heft, but the structure of the film. Those looking for plot or character development, beware. Writer-director Clement Virgo (perhaps taking from the source material — I don’t read much Canadian lit not by Anne Carson so I couldn’t tell you) has structured Brother as a non-chronological tonal study of coming of age as Black youths in Canada. It flits among three time periods, without a clear structure. There’s the early ‘80s, where Ruth raises young Francis and Michael (played in these scenes by Jacob Williams and Sebastian Singh) amid a wave of robberies in Toronto; 1991, with Francis and Michael in high school trying to chart their own identities and paths into manhood, with formation of key relationships — Francis with Jelly (Lovell Adams-Gray), a DJ at the local barbershop, and Michael with neighbor and schoolmate Aisha (Kiana Madeira) — as a set of gang beatings and shootings roil the community; and then in 2001, after the deaths of Francis and Aisha’s father (Dwain Murphy), with the cast left to pick up the pieces. Throughout, you know something awful is going to happen to Francis, Michael’s protector but also the creator of a shadow enveloping his younger brother. Nameless white characters — the cops, the dismissive woodshop teacher (to whom all the Black students are tracked) — hover but are not centered. The tension grows with each scene. Music — of the Caribbean and of the US — brings the community together against fear, sadness, and stress, not to mention cutting the film’s dark tone. (In contrast to the many samples and soundtrack features, the compositions by Tobor Kobakov are decidedly spare.)

This could have easily been a depressing, poverty-pornographic film if not for a screenplay and direction borne of Virgo’s own lived experience — raised by a single mother in Metro Toronto in this time period — and if not for a skilled cast of actors on the rise. Pierre reminds me of James Dean or a young Sidney Poitier as Francis: tense and ready to explode, or implode, but somehow also gentle. He’s set to star in the new Blade film and the Mufasa prequel to The Lion King and I look forward to seeing his future work. Madeira also shines, especially with the benefit of Aisha being pretty much the only character whose sense of growth is clear (largely for getting a writing scholarship and being able to leave for university and late-’90s computer programming in Uganda and Jamaica). And even Blake, who has a fairly one-note role as Ruth, ably presents the stress of going from one menial job to another, all while facing the mental anguish of having lost her eldest son. Finally, as Michael, Johnson is faced with a role that is a bit too simplistic — always afraid and tentative, and never quite sure how and when to speak up or speak out — but plays the ably role as given.

Then again, he won Best Lead Performance at the Canadian Screen Awards, one of a leading twelve honors for the film earlier this year, so what do I know? I certainly agree with them that Brother is a stunning piece of art, and a film of clear creative quality, if not necessarily narrative skill. Overall, Brother is a film that evokes a place and an emotional tone.