Brother to Brother DVD Review:

Using the experiences of a young black artist who also happens to be gay, Brother to Brother brings us into the life of writer Bruce Nugent in a somewhat preachy and translucent film by Rodney Evans. Although technically the film has a raw and truthful approach to telling the story of two different lives in different times in Harlem, there are moments of the film which are too black and white to take seriously, and not just the flashback sequences.

Perry is a young black artist struggling to figure out what that means in today’s world, and things are complicated for him even further when he is caught having a homosexual affair and kicked out of his home by his parents. Thinking that he is struggling with something that nobody would understand, he suddenly meets a strange man who turns out to be a gay black writer from the Harlem Renaissance. As Bruce tells Perry about their struggles to put out a revolutionary literary magazine when he was younger, Perry learns to be proud as he learns that others have gone before him.

Brother to Brother is a tough film to criticize because of its brave subject matter and the fluidness in which it is presented, but I couldn’t help but feel as though I was supposed to learn something from the film, and what I was asked to learn was presented in a way that made me feel as though it was more than just opinion. Agree or not, I don’t enjoy being preached to while watching a movie, and it seemed that this was the only goal of Brother to Brother.

Evans undoubtedly shows a knack for words, seeming to be a poet himself, but there is a serious problem with the way the film seemed to be structured. Although I have no problem not knowing where a film will lead, it is a problem when I don’t really know the point when the credits start to roll.

Anthony Mackie is a strong talent and he stands out among the rest of the cast as someone to be watched in the future. I kept hoping that his character would show some signs of depth, and although Mackie seemed to do all that he could with the material, focus was spent more on situations than character. Unnecessary scenes of gay bashing could have been replaced with a more introspective look of how Perry was actually feeling, making this a film much more accessible to the public, something that the film seems to preach against.



Ryan Izay