My Brother The Devil

I get a lot of emails from the Sundance Institute. Mostly they go straight into the trash bin - do I really want to attend a reading in Chicago? - but last week I got one that caught my eye: There was going to be a free screening of a film in NYC that I'd wanted to see this January at the festival! Dad and I had both thought My Brother The Devil looked intriguing (in spite of its somewhat unwieldy title) but either couldn't get tickets or couldn't find a showing at a time that worked for us - can't remember which. So I was very pleased to head to the Dolby Screening Room on the East Side for a second chance. Often, Sundance is one's only chance to see some of these films, as many of them don't get picked up by distributors. Brother had, though, and the writer/director (Sally El Hosaini) and leading actor (James Floyd) were introduced by the president/CEO/something important from Paladin Films. Their intro was brief, and then the lights dimmed and I settled into my plush seat (far from Sundance both geographically and atmospherically, there were no folding chairs here) and settled in to watch the film.

Mo and Rash

It was not at all what I expected, but I really loved it and highly recommend it. It's a story about a pair of brothers, Rashid and Mohammed (Rash and Mo) who live in a rough part of London called Hackney. Typical of the Brits, their neighborhood is called an estate, though on this side of the pond we'd call it the projects. Mo desperately wants to be like Rash, a tough guy who runs with a local gang and sells drugs. On can't help but like Rash, though. He's a nice guy (in once scene he sneaks his mother's wallet out of her purse to secretly place money into it instead of taking money out) and seems pretty smart. Rash attempts to keep Mo out of the gang, but Mo wants in desperately. Then a feud with a rival gang gets ugly, unleashing a series of sometimes predictable and sometimes completely surprising events. I won't give anything else about the plot away, because I think just about everyone should see this movie. In the beginning, the thick accents and crazy slang were difficult to understand, but I got into the rhythm of the dialogue pretty quickly and had no trouble once I was about ten minutes into the film. The acting was superb, and the interesting relationship between the two brothers and their parents, as well as the setting and a few other twists prevented this from feeling like a typical gangland movie. The best part, though, was the cinematography. I'd like to watch this film again and pay attention to the shooting when I'm not sucked into the plot, but engrossed as I was, I loved the editing, camera angles, and use of color. I wasn't the only one impressed either; there were plenty of questions and admiring comments in the post-show Q and A about the shooting, and the film also won Sundance's award for best cinematography. (El Hosaini says she likes Gus Van Sant's work and loved the shooting in The Fighter and Tree of Life as well.)

The film was too good to walk out of even for a few minutes, which was really a pity as I'd drunk a cup of coffee and quite a bit of water before heading to the theater. The second the end credits began to roll,  therefore, I seized my purse and made a quick dash to the exit, causing me to almost knock over the El Hosaini and Floyd as they entered the theater. Flustered by surprise and distracted by thoughts about my bladder, I blurted out something breathless about the film being phenomenal and continued my sprint. I heard a bemused, British "thank you" coming from behind me. 

El Hosaini with the stars of her film

I made it back to my seat in plenty of time for the Q and A, which was fascinating, though I think I'd have had plenty of food for thought if I'd just seen a picture of the director and actor speaking to the audience. El Hosaini was an almost dumpy, very pleasant and clean-cut woman with glasses and a pink scarf. She looked to be in her 30's and did not have a single face tattoo - hardly the sort of person who'd write a convincing script about hardened gansters. Floyd, who'd played Rash in the movie, wore a baby blue scarf and glasses and his longish haircut made him look much younger. It also made him look like the sort of person I could beat in an arm wrestling match, whereas I'd have been scared to look cross-eyed at his character in the film. We learned that El Hosaini, a former Hackney resident herself, spent six years working on the script for the film, attending several Sundance script workshops along the way. In contrast, the film took only 28 days to shoot, a ratio she likened (using Floyd's analogy) to a boxer who trains and trains for a big match but then has to be ready for the unpredictability of the ring. Because of her low budget (650,000 pounds, which is nothing to sneeze at but isn't much for a film), they had to use natural light wherever possible instead of hauling in lots of expensive equipment for illumination, and they had to work around the London riots, which were going on all around them during the shoot. She also saved money by hiring locals for many of the roles, a decision that was more artistic than financial. Mo (played by Fady Elsayed), a fantastic screen presence, had never acted before in his life and was spotted by a scout at a local mall when El Hosaini wasn't happy with the applicants she'd seen for the role. He was hired two days before filming began. Floyd was one of the only professional actors in the film. As a method actor, he lived on the estate for five months with the local youths before shooting began. In fact, Elsayed did not meet the real James Floyd until shooting wrapped; he interacted only with Floyd in the role of Rash. Elsayed said he wasn't so sure he liked him at first because Floyd, as Rash, kept putting him in headlocks and roughhousing with him the way an older brother would. I was amazed to hear that most of the characters in the film were not actors; El Hosaini must have done a brilliant job of preparing them. They were professional and believable, and I hardly felt that there was a camera between us in some scenes. 

I'd assumed that much of the dialogue was improvised, but, amazingly, Floyd said that virtually every word, even the long diatribes made up entirely of fast, nearly incomprehensible slang, were scripted. Apparently during her research on the estate, El Hosaini struck up a friendship with a young man who ended up playing the character of Repo in the film, and he served as a sort of script consultant. She said learning the slang was much like learning a second language, and she sent draft after draft of the script to this guy who ripped it to shreds until it sounded authentic. 

One statement she made was particularly resonant to me: El Hosaini said she visualized the brothers' relationship as being sort of like a double helix, like a strand of DNA. This is appropriate because they're related, of course, but she envisioned them as sort of spiraling around each other. When the script was finished, she and one of her colleagues actually graphed the emotional states of each brother at each moment throughout the film and found that almost without fail, when Rash was on a high, Mo was low, and vice versa. They ended up balancing each other perfectly throughout the film, and El Hosaini achieved this balance almost subconsciously. To me, this is the sign of good writing: important trends and connections happen organically and only later does a writer look back and realize what he/she's created. I had a lit teacher in college who talked that way about symbolism. Some authors, she said, seem to mix in symbols the way you'd dump chocolate chips into cookie dough, whereas others' use of symbolism seems to grow from the work itself so that it's an intrinsic part of the structure, and without it everything else would fall apart. 

Although I imagine few of you will have the opportunity to experience this film the way I did, I can't recommend it highly enough. It's showing around New York City now, so check theaters near you or look for it on Netflix. If you don't like it, I'll let you beat me at arm wrestling.