Brothers
of the Head
R4 DVD
Madman Entertainment 2008
Brothers
of the Head is a strange and unusual faux documentary. It takes us on a journey
with brothers Tom (Harry Treadaway) and Barry (Luke Treadaway), conjoined twins
(joined at the stomach) who were sold in their teens to a showman looking for a
new band to promote. Zak Bedderwick is a failed showman who has not had a
success in quite a while and his manager Nick Sydney (Sean Harris) will do
anything it takes to achieve success.
The
movie opens deliberately playing with the multiple levels of deception within
the film itself, we see a superbly produced “Gothic” scene showing the twins
being taken from their isolated country home and then the producer calls cut
and we realize it is a film within a film. Using deliberately aged film stocks
and interviews with people like Ken Russell and Brian Aldis the filmmakers
create a truly superb mood of authenticity which really takes you in.
Slowly,
the boys develop their own personalities, as Barry becomes more out of control,
their act becomes a punk rock explosion and their psychological lives begin to
disintegrate. As love and desire enter the picture and Barry wants his freedom
to follow his love for Laura, things go very wrong.
What
is especially interesting is that that the film uses all sorts of different
cinematic styles from lineal filmmaking to steady cam and super 8 footage to
interviews. In the end we never quite know what happens to the conjoined twins
and this leaves us even more uncomfortable than if the film gave us the whole
story.
The
exploration of exploitation, violence, manipulation and the cost of fame is
superbly done within the context of a very unusual story.
This
is the second film from Fulton and Louis Pepe who make Lost in La Manchu on the
strange world of Terry Gilliam; it is dark, moody and at times perversely
homo-erotic film. It is filled with music from the 70’s punk rock scene and is
certainly quite in a category of its own.