The Sisters Brothers

Back in the saddle with Jacques Audiard

Jacques Audiard is the most American of French filmmakers. In his case, this is a very good thing. He makes better American movies than Americans make French movies, and than most American directors in general. He is not of the stream of abstract ideas and intellectual pontificating in French cinema. His movies, Un Prophet, Rust and Bone, Read My Lips, The Beat My Heart Skipped, Dheepan, tell big stories, full of incident and drama.

And now he has made his Western, a foundational myth of rapacious capitalism and its never ending cycle of violence and greed. With an excellent script by Audiard and his longtime collaborator Thomas Bidegain, The Sisters Brothers is a brutal yet entertaining and affecting movie about two brothers who can’t escape violence. John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix play Eli and Charlie Sisters. Whereas Charlie is a loose cannon and killing machine, Eli is even tempered and longs for stability. Both actors are mesmerizing. Reilly is effortless and charming as usual. He is in the moment at every moment and you can feel his crushing longing for love and quiet, his devastating exhaustion with the cycle of doom to which Charlie has tethered him. Phoenix is riveting and quite darkly funny. His Charlie is not interested at all in peace and quiet. He is a bona fide sociopath, actually proud of his exploits. And why not? He’s…