Docu-Rama Film Festival 2011-Film #1: Brother's Keeper (1992)

It's a well-known fact that the deeper one journeys into the country (AKA, the sticks, the Boonies, Squeal-Lika-A-Pigville), the more unruly the nose hair one is destined to encounter. There's just something about country folk and prominently, almost proudly, displayed nose hair. Take, well, everyone in the Joe Berlinger/Bruce Sinofsky documentary Brother's Keeper. The characters who inhabit each frame of this compelling, sometimes disturbing, film are either extremely proud of the nasal shrubbery they have cultivated over their lifetimes or too old to care about petty things like personal hygiene. I have an inkling that it is a combination of the two.

But Brother's Keeper is about more than unkempt nostril foliage. It's also about murder. Fratricide to be exact. Or, rather, alleged fratricide. It's also about, in no particular order, these other things: poverty, illiteracy, tractor repair, incest, shacks, farming, beards, and community. Also, at one point, a pig is graphically slaughter for your viewing enjoyment.

Brother's Keeper tells the story of the Ward brothers, or "them Ward boys," as they're known around town. The Wards--Roscoe, a toothless, nearly unintelligible collector of chickens and turkeys; Lyman, a nervous fella who takes sanctuary in the barn whenever things get too 'real;' William (AKA Bill), the dead one, prone to accidents (cut himself with a chainsaw; one foot crushed by a cow), headaches, and stomach problems before his mysterious death; and Delbert, a likable sort whose been accused of smothering his sick brother--live together in a two room shack filled with garbage and cats and have done so for as long as any of them remember. It's like some kind of weird Beckett play or something. All three living brothers--William is already in the ground before the doc begins--are wide-eyed innocents, their only connections to the outside world a small television on which they watch Matlock and Jeopardy and their occasional tractor-jaunts into town.

The town in question is Munnsville, New York. That's right, bub, there's more to New York than skyscrapers and M & M stores. There's also cattle, toothless bumpkins, and miles upon miles of pristine, boring farmland. In the tiny town of Munnsville, the Ward boys have always been viewed as outcasts, smelly halfwits who rarely spoke to anyone they weren't related to. The citizenry treated them well, but they didn't go out of their way to chew the fat with 'em neither. Of course, this all changes when the state police charge Delbert with murder. Next thing you know, the good people of Munnsville are pooling their money to hire a lawyer, throwing charity potluck suppers, and jockeying for camera time to express how much they love them good ole Ward boys. Nobody in town believes Delbert is a cold-blooded killer. You tell me, does this look like the face of a soulless murderer?

Brother's Keeper is a gripping film, especially when the filmmakers take us into the actual courtroom. In the film's most devastating scene, nervous-nelly Lyman is reduced to a sweaty pile of tremors when repeatedly asked by the prosecutor if he was telling the truth in a statement he made when he was first questioned by the police (Lymon claimed he had discussed putting Bill out of his misery with Delbert the day before their brothers death; Delbert, under duress, agreed to the murder scenario interrogators laid out for him). It is a moment almost as hard to watch as the pig slaughter that follows it. Almost. I actually closed my eyes during the whole pig killing thing.

GEP says: WATCH IT!