The Brothers Polish do not try to obviously overturn accepted notions of 'weirdness' that might attend any representation of their subject matter (Siamese twins). The film opens with images of duality linked with strangeness - two girls in a cab part; a man with an iron claw gives them change, two ripped pieces of dollar sellotaped together. So already the notion of being two is linked to rupture, disrepair, disfigurement.
One of the women, Penny, a prostitute dressed and eye-lined like a teenage Goth, walks through a strange hotel that seems to exist in a suffocatingly smoky time-warp. She enters a lift guarded by a weird old codger who comes out with some incongruous comments and a barmy sense of direction. The corridor smells of stale urine. Later we discover that neighbours include a 'jive'-talking marriage counsellor-cum-evangelist called Jesus (registration no: HEY ZEUS).
The corridor is wallpapered an off-green, complementing the sickly olive beaming in the boy's bedroom. The score, on the whole the kind of thing you'd hear in any 'quality' Hollywood picture, is sustained just a little too long, and becomes a little Badalamenti-like, confirming the overall David Lynch feel which is strengthened by a later sequence in a freakshow, and a general similarity of plot and melancholy to 'The Elephant Man'; although the feeling here is more the similarly titled 'Twin Peaks'. How can the heroes seem other than weird?
A lot of people have been claiming this as one of the year's best movies. I just mustn't have got it. Of course, I sympathised with the brothers, the sexual frustration, the identity crises, the fundamental feelings of abandonment, yet also the privileged, whispered, shared private life, the idea of coming to a dive hotel to die. The development of the relationship between Penny and Blake is very sympathetic, although the character of Penny is so richly and engagingly realised, she risks making the twins seem one-dimensional (no pun intended). The cod-Freudianisms of having her psychologically compensate for an abandoned, retarded child by mothering/loving two disabled 'boys' is a little pat, as is the disjunction between her moral growth as a person, and their physical decline.
There is much that is beautiful here - the world flooded with the boys' necessarily off-centre worldview; the whole Halloween sequence; the dream sequence with the bicycles (linking Siamese twins with silent cinema for the second time this year (the other is 'Of Freaks and Men') - what's going on here?).
It's just that everything happens as you'd expect, as predictable as you'd guess a Hollywood movie about Siamese twins would be - right down to the moment when the errant mum returns to squeeze her dying son's hand, or the circus past. And maybe that's the rub, not just that Hollywood would never make a film about Siamese Twins, but that a Hollywood-like film about Siamese twins, like the score, is a little off-kilter; that Siamese twins, as much as brawny action heroes, muddled bimbos and precocious teenagers deserve the Hollywood treatment as much as anyone? I guess?
One of the women, Penny, a prostitute dressed and eye-lined like a teenage Goth, walks through a strange hotel that seems to exist in a suffocatingly smoky time-warp. She enters a lift guarded by a weird old codger who comes out with some incongruous comments and a barmy sense of direction. The corridor smells of stale urine. Later we discover that neighbours include a 'jive'-talking marriage counsellor-cum-evangelist called Jesus (registration no: HEY ZEUS).
The corridor is wallpapered an off-green, complementing the sickly olive beaming in the boy's bedroom. The score, on the whole the kind of thing you'd hear in any 'quality' Hollywood picture, is sustained just a little too long, and becomes a little Badalamenti-like, confirming the overall David Lynch feel which is strengthened by a later sequence in a freakshow, and a general similarity of plot and melancholy to 'The Elephant Man'; although the feeling here is more the similarly titled 'Twin Peaks'. How can the heroes seem other than weird?
A lot of people have been claiming this as one of the year's best movies. I just mustn't have got it. Of course, I sympathised with the brothers, the sexual frustration, the identity crises, the fundamental feelings of abandonment, yet also the privileged, whispered, shared private life, the idea of coming to a dive hotel to die. The development of the relationship between Penny and Blake is very sympathetic, although the character of Penny is so richly and engagingly realised, she risks making the twins seem one-dimensional (no pun intended). The cod-Freudianisms of having her psychologically compensate for an abandoned, retarded child by mothering/loving two disabled 'boys' is a little pat, as is the disjunction between her moral growth as a person, and their physical decline.
There is much that is beautiful here - the world flooded with the boys' necessarily off-centre worldview; the whole Halloween sequence; the dream sequence with the bicycles (linking Siamese twins with silent cinema for the second time this year (the other is 'Of Freaks and Men') - what's going on here?).
It's just that everything happens as you'd expect, as predictable as you'd guess a Hollywood movie about Siamese twins would be - right down to the moment when the errant mum returns to squeeze her dying son's hand, or the circus past. And maybe that's the rub, not just that Hollywood would never make a film about Siamese Twins, but that a Hollywood-like film about Siamese twins, like the score, is a little off-kilter; that Siamese twins, as much as brawny action heroes, muddled bimbos and precocious teenagers deserve the Hollywood treatment as much as anyone? I guess?