Brothers of the Head: A Soul at War With Itself

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Leave your preconceptions at the door, please. You won't be needing them when you're done here. Brothers of the Head is a film the likes of which you've not seen before. Ostensibly the story of cojoined twins who rise to rock stardom in the mid 1970's, it spits out inherent cliches to emerge as an ultimately tragic tale of isolation.

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Based on the novel by speculative fiction author Brian Aldiss, and scripted bu Tony Grisoni (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), Brothers of the Head is presented as a fictionalized documentary. But don't label it a "mockumentary"-- this film immerses the viewer so deeply in its alternate reality that one is almost convinced that it really did happen. Co-directors Keith Sulton and Louis Pepe (Lost in LaMancha) are best known for their documentaries, and it is to their credit they continued this approach with Brothers of the Head. This is a story that could not be properly told in a linear style.

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Tom and Barry Howe were born cojoined at the sternum, and their mother during childbirth. Their grief-stricken father, fearing he would lose them both, refused to consider separating them surgically. They spend their formative years relatively isolated on L'Estrange Head, an island off Eastern England. But when a promoter approaches the father with the idea of turning the boys into a musical act, he accepts immediately, and pretty much sells the twins to the promoter.

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This set-up would be trite, but it's layered into the film via interviews and "footage" chronicling the rise and fall of the brothers' band, the Bang Bang.

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It's pretty much a given that it's impossible to write a great rock and roll drama,since the nature of the beast dictates that the story has to center around the rise to glory and the inevitable fall from grace.Brothers of the Head takes takes that premise and spins it into the darkly surreal.This isn't really a rock movie--the proto-punk London of the mid-seventies is only a backdrop for the story of a soul in conflict with itself. Tom and Barry are a singular soul trapped in separate bodies, forever linked by the appendage that binds them.
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By presenting the film as a "documentary," Fulton and Pepe are able to exploit the conflicts the twins feel without involvement. In fact, it's twice removed from involvement in that much of it is based on an "unfinished Ken Russel film" about the Bang Bang, to have been called Two Way Romeo. We know from the beginning, through interviews and news footage, that the twins are deceased, so the film focuses on how the tragedy came to be.
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It's a story of exploitation and how society seizes on that exploitation to mass produce, and finally destroy, its manufactured heroes. It's also a story of defiance, in that the twins spit the exploitation back into the face of their tormentors, and play it for all it's worth. Finally, it's a story of the futile quest for individuality.
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As portrayed by real-life twins Luke and Harry Treadaway, Tom and Barry represent the duality that resides in us all. Even when making love to their girlfriend (Tania Emery), one is impassioned, the other sullen. Connected as they are, they can never connect fully to another, including each other.. This spills into all aspects of their life, with Tom emerging as the quiet artist, and Barry playing the role of the raucous rocker. The result is an arresting portrait of inner chaos.
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The burgeoning punk setting adds fuel to the metaphor. The twins' conflicts and rivalries fuel their anger, and mirror the angst of disenfranchised youth that gave rise to the original punk movement in England. The music here--all original-- is raw, basic and perfectly conjures up the the ennui and anger of those times. (The soundtrack stands on its own, and will be reviewed separately.)The dialogue, the audience scenes, the sheer feeling that something is about to change, all ring true.
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Brothers of the Head may very well be the strangest movie you'll see this year. But it's a strangeness that rings uncomfortably close to our perceptions. It's a film that will haunt you for a long while.

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