Head Trip - Page 2
Putting them all to shame, Brothers of the Head manages to be funny, original, sensitive, and daring while tackling the same themes that all of these movies do less successfully. Wisely, the film quickly moves from the twins' childhood home in L'Estrange Head, where the twins frolic in sepia meadows in eerie clips that call to mind The Ring and The Blair Witch Project, to a completely recognizable world: England, 1974, the dawn of punk. The film's documentary style is applied so skillfully to this gritty reality that Tom and Barry seem more real than even Daisy and Violet did when playing themselves. The effect is that age-old conjoined-twin themes take on more heft.
More impressive than Brothers of the Head's success as a conjoined twin movie is its success as a rock'n'roll movie—another genre riddled with flops (Satisfaction, Light of Day, Rock Star). The problem is usually two-fold; 1) the music stinks; you're supposed to believe these people are famous yet can't imagine them ever getting that way playing such schlock, and 2) the whole enterprise is woefully un-hip. Here, while song titles like "Two Way Romeo" might set off all sorts of alarm bells, the music—much of it written by producer Clive Langer (Madness, Elvis Costello)—actually rocks. The Bang Bang isn't just a freak show, they're good. They're a sort of missing link between T Rex and the Sex Pistols, and most importantly, they're cool. The fact that the Treadaway brothers actually play and sing in the film and that the directors avoided playbacks and lip-syncing all together contributes immeasurably to the film's success as a rock film. It's all so real and exciting that you'll find yourself wishing the Bang Bang had actually existed and that you'd been in the back room of that grimy pub to see their first tense, terrifying, ultimately brilliant gig.
Odds are no one's ever going to make a film adaptation of Love Will Tear Us Apart but if they did I'd like to think it would be as cool, as edgy, as sexy, as thoroughly well conceived and executed as Brothers of the Head. In the theater, you will hold your breath—and your bladder, if need be. And when Barry, a particularly haunting presence in the film, stares down the camera right at you as if to say "what the f&#$ are you looking at?" you'll squirm like you should look away—but you won't.
Tara McCarthy is the author of the novel Love Will Tear Us Apart. A graduate of Harvard University, she also writes fiction for teens as Tara Altebrando. For more information, visit http://www.taraaltebrando.com.
