But the Danish films Brotherhood (2009) is an unusual offering even within that film genre, about the relationship that develops between a new convert Lars (Thure Lindhardt) to a tightly-knit group of Danish white supremacists and a longtime member Jimmy (David Dencik). If other films have depicted the white supremacist movement as composed of thick-as-thieves, almost familial groups of young men, Brotherhood does those films one better by suggesting an almost homoerotic element to their ties that certainly plays out in the developing relationship between Jimmy and Lars.
Lars is a 22-year-old from a good family with a passive father and a domineering mother. He has recently left the army after rumors of inappropriate sexual behavior have kept him from a promised promotion. While his meddling mother, a city council member, tries to use her connections to find Lars a better job, a chance meeting with two neo-Nazis on a recruiting drive opens up a hidden world to him. He's is at first skeptical and insulting, calling them "losers" for their opposition to a local refugee center for immigrants to Denmark. But their leader Michael nicknamed "Fatty" (Nicolas Bro) keeps the pressure on Lars, recognizing how his intelligence and eloquence can help the movement.
Eventually Lars warms to the closeness of the group and, it's tempting to imagine, because his involvement would be ruinous to his mother's public reputation. The group of neo-Nazis with their utter allegiance to their cause and each other at first seems a break from the lack of a similar brotherhood for Lars, in the Danish army. Before long, Fatty is offering Lars "A-membership" in the group, impressed by his use of propaganda in the group's anti-immigrant agenda. The membership, however, is an offer that cannot be refused.
When Lars and his mother clash, Fatty offers up an ocean-side cottage as a temporary home. Jimmy--also an army veteran--is fixing the home up for the older, moneyed benefactor of the neo-Nazi cell, Ebbe (Claus Flygare). In close quarters, an affection grows between them that soon blossoms into more as the film transforms in a surprising and radical way. Director Nicolo Donato builds tension as their romantic relationship builds in intensity, alongside the certainty that someone in the gang will get wind of their involvement. There is no ambiguity in how the group feels about gay men. In the film's opening scene, the gang is shown attacking a young gay man in a public park, with Jimmy as the most vicious and violent of the lot.
It is Donato's occasional lack of ambiguity that can often run counter to the sensitivity of his approach. The climactic ending and its chain of violence is as overstated as the far-too-immediate conversion of Lars to fascism after his initially strong resistance.
But Donato is onto something in creating an emotional dichotomy between hatred and intolerance on one side, and love and discovery on the other. And there is something unique too, in his and co-screenwriter Rasmus Birch's treatment of the full spectrum of male relationships, from the care-taking role Jimmy takes with his younger brother, and drug addict Patrick (Molten Holst) to the fierce devotion of the gang members for each other and the tenderness between Jimmy and Lars. And most radically, Donato sees something of a continuum in the homoeroticism that often characterizes the gang relationships and the outright homosexual relationship between Jimmy and Lars. There is a correspondence too, in the pressure to be masculine at any cost that possesses all the men in the film, whether in the army, the gang or seen in the pressure Lars' mother puts on her son to live up to her expectations. "There's not an ounce of man in you" she cruelly tells her son. It's a lot to tackle for a first-time director, but Donato manages to pull off a very challenging balancing act, between sensationalism and insight and offers a nuanced, engaging film in the process.
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by Felicia Feaster
