06/25/2002 Entry:
"The Brother From Another Planet - John Sayles (1984)"

John Sayles and Maggie Renzi came to Chicago to introduce this film, as a kickoff event for their current traveling retrospective. Sayles spoke for a few minutes then took questions from the audience. Somehow he managed to not pick me, but still pick the person who had to ask "What happened at the end of Limbo?" He said, "Well, either the plane had their friends and they were rescued or the plane had the bad guys and they were killed." This is not the answer I would have given, because it avoids the issue. The real answer is, "Three people who were separate and alone became united as a single unit and then the movie ended because the movie wasn't about the fucking plane." Ah, if only.

After being dissed by Sayles, he and Renzi left and they showed the movie which I had never seen before. I had actually never seen any of his earlier works and it was quite a contrast compared to the later ones which I had seen (Eight Men Out, Passion Fish, Men With Guns, Limbo, Lone Star, Secret Of Roan Inish.) This movie was very rough and obviously low budget as opposed to the later more lush films. However there were certain stylistic elements already coming to the fore which were featured later, like the little musical punctuations.

One of the things I love about the previous Sayles movies I had seen is that in them, the locale is almost like another character. The films have a real sense of place and a real feeling and local flavor that is totally integrated into the story. Brother did not seem to have that as much, which is kind of a shame. Sure it was obviously in New York, but it could have just as easily been any large American city.

I like the movie, it was fun. There was something being said there about language and communication, but I would need to see it again to home in on it (aside from the commentary about race relations which is sometimes painfully obvious.) Frankly, the best part was seeing the young Sayles and David Strathairn loping around like space monkeys screeching as they chased Joe Morton. That was cracking my shit up. The old school arcade scenery was pretty cool too. Goof: the Robotron machine was playing noises from Centipede. Oh yeah, and pinball graveyard my ass!

Replies: 2 comments

I have the wrong number. Posted by Ten @ 06/28/2002 08:56 PM CST

i like it Posted by hjhjhj @ 07/04/2002 08:10 PM CST