| The Brothers Bloom | |
|---|---|
Promotional poster |
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| Directed by | Rian Johnson |
| Produced by | Wendy Japhet Ram Bergman James D. Stern |
| Written by | Rian Johnson |
| Narrated by | Ricky Jay |
| Starring | Rachel Weisz Adrien Brody Mark Ruffalo Rinko Kikuchi Maximillian Schell Robbie Coltrane |
| Music by | Nathan Johnson |
| Cinematography | Steve Yedlin |
| Distributed by | Summit Entertainment |
| Release date(s) | September 9, 2008 (TIFF) May 15, 2009 (United States) June 4, 2010 (UK) |
| Running time | 113 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $20 million |
| Box office | $5,530,764[1] |
The Brothers Bloom is a 2008 American postmodern caper film written and directed by Rian Johnson. The film stars Mark Ruffalo, Adrien Brody, Rachel Weisz, Ricky Jay, Rinko Kikuchi, and Robbie Coltrane. Originally released in only four theaters on May 15, 2009, the film moved into wide release two weeks later on May 29.[1]
Contents |
The Brothers Bloom start their adventures in confidence tricks as young children; Stephen dreams up elaborate scenarios and his younger brother, Bloom, creates trust with the marks. The brothers’ successful cons and Stephen's fiercely protective nature of Bloom has the children rejected from foster homes throughout their childhood.
Twenty-five years later, the brothers are celebrating the end of another con. At the party, Bloom realizes that Stephen controls everything in their lives. Bloom decides to quit and move to Montenegro. Three months later, Stephen finds Bloom and convinces him to execute one final con masquerading as antique dealers with Bang Bang, a Japanese explosives expert. The mark is Penelope Stamp, a rich socially-isolated New Jersey heiress daughter of a previous target. To meet her, Bloom stages a car accident, but during the accident she has a seizure and is taken to the hospital.
Penelope is discharged and reveals to Bloom that she was alone for most of her life. Bloom hints that he is leaving the country tomorrow. Next morning at the harbor, Penelope arrives to accompany Bloom to Greece. Maximillen, a Belgian hired by Stephen, tells Penelope that the Brothers Bloom are in fact antique smugglers. Enchanted, Penelope decides to become a smuggler. Maximillen, as instructed by Stephen, offers Penelope a smuggling job of retrieving a book from a museum in Prague. Penelope convinces the brothers to travel to Prague, unaware it is staged. On the train Penelope expresses affection for Bloom.
In Prague they meet with Maximillen to plan stealing the book. According to Stephen's plan, Maximillen cons Penelope out of a million dollars and escapes. Penelope decides to steal the book anyway. The plan is to place explosives in Prague Castle to set off the fire alarm, evacuating the building. Instead, Penelope accidentally blows up the entire tower, resulting in the military arriving. Penelope, unaware of the military, enters the museum and retrieves the book. The ventilation shaft she tries to crawl through gives out, dropping her into a room filled with soldiers. Penelope convinces the chief of police to let her go.
While in their hotel's bar, Bloom is visited by his and Stephen's former mentor and current enemy, Diamond Dog. He warns Bloom that Stephen will not be around forever, and tells Bloom he should join him. Bloom is paralyzed with fear and anger as Stephen arrives; Stephen stabs Diamond Dog in the hand with a broken bottle, telling him to stay away.
In Mexico Bloom tells Penelope they are con men, which Stephen anticipates. The brothers fight and a gun accidentally discharges, and Stephen is shot. Penelope checks out the wound, realizes that it is fake blood, and leaves with a broken heart. Bloom angrily punches Stephen and leaves for Montenegro.
Three months later, Penelope blows up her mansion and finds Bloom, wanting to be with him and to become a con artist. Unable to deny his love for her but not wanting her to be like him, Bloom meets with Stephen to set up one final con to make her believe they are dead.
The brothers set off to St. Petersburg, where they must sell the book to Diamond Dog as part of the con. They are ambushed by Diamond Dog's gang while heading to the exchange. Stephen is kidnapped and held for $1.75 million. Bloom suspects this is just another con by Stephen; Penelope, just in case, wires the money from her bank account to the mobsters. Before the exchange, Bang Bang decides to leave just as her car explodes, leaving Penelope and Bloom uncertain whether she was caught in the blast or faked her death.
Alone, Bloom goes into an abandoned theater for the exchange, and finds Stephen tied up and beaten. Bloom demands Stephen tell him if this is real or if it is a con. A hit man tosses Bloom a phone, and Diamond Dog confirms that it is real. The hit man attacks them, and Stephen takes a bullet for Bloom and collapses on the floor. Bloom asks Stephen whether this was real, or just the "perfect con." Stephen gets up and assures Bloom that he is fine. Stephen tells Bloom to leave St. Petersburg forever with Penelope, and that they will meet again.
After driving for several hours, Bloom wakes up in the car and discovers that Stephen's blood stain on his shirt has changed in color from red to brown, indicting that the blood was not fake. Realizing that Stephen has surely died, Bloom breaks down on the side of the road while Penelope tries to comfort him. As they are leaving, Bloom recalls what Stephen had said earlier, "The perfect con is one where everyone involved gets just the thing they wanted." For Penelope and Bloom, what they wanted was life with each other, while for Stephen it was to write a con so perfect it became real: thus, Stephen pulls the "perfect con", Diamond Dog really gets revenge, and Bloom and Penelope drive off into the sunset.
The original script was titled Penelope after Weisz's character. Shooting began in Ulcinj, Montenegro on March 19, 2007. The film had an estimated budget of $20 million.
| "Paper Moon is probably the closest to a direct influence. I love The Sting and House of Games, but Paper Moon was really the first thing I watched that took more of a fairy-tale approach and was more relationship based. Other than that, God, take your pick."
—Rian Johnson, director/writer[6] |
Johnson first had the idea for The Brothers Bloom a few years before Brick. Originally the film was going to be more serious and had a mentor relationship instead of brothers. He started writing the script after taking Brick to Sundance over the next sixth months.[7] The script was challenging for Johnson to write because he wanted to create a character-based con man film with an "emotional payoff" while including all the story telling aspects of the genre. Johnson felt by sticking to a standard form of a con man film (two guys with one girl and one of them falls in love with the girl) he could deviate from the classical ending with a big twist.[3] When writing the script Johnson watched The Man Who Would Be King but his main influence came from Paper Moon. While filming the movie he watched The Conformist and 8½ for visual style.[6]
Penelope's castle is the Peles Castle in Sinaia, Romania. Other locations include Belgrade (Serbia), the Constanța Casino, the Port of Constanța (Romania) and various locations in Greece and Montenegro. The exterior scenes involving the theft of the book were shot in Prague, both in and around Prague Castle and on the Charles Bridge.
During the two week rehearsal period Weisz had to learn to look like she could do all the skills that her character Penelope knew. This included banjo, violin, guitar, piano, juggling, break dancing, skateboarding, and card tricks.[8] Brody helped Weisz learn to skateboard; she said, "Brody is a good skateboarder, so we were in the parking lot outside the place we were filming."[9] Brody also helped her to learn to rap; when she first tried "he was so ashamed."[10] The card trick was the most difficult for Weisz and took her a month of practicing every day to learn.[11] The shot itself took 11 or so takes, but the one continuous shot in the film is not enhanced in any way.[12]
| The Brothers Bloom: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack | |
|---|---|
| Soundtrack album by Nathan Johnson | |
| Released | May 19, 2009 |
| Length | 48:12 |
| Label | Cut Narrative Records |
The Brothers Bloom: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack was released on May 19, 2009 by Cut Narrative Records. Director Rian Johnson's cousin, musician Nathan Johnson, composed the score for the film as he did on Johnson's directorial debut, Brick.
Three songs in the film are not available on the soundtrack:"Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You" by Bob Dylan, "Miles From Nowhere" by Cat Stevens, and "Sleeping" by The Band, which was performed karaoke-style by Rinko Kikuchi. Rian Johnson listened to The Band while writing the script, and their music was a major influence on the score.
In a digitally-released soundtrack companion booklet, Nathan Johnson said that since the film was about storytelling, it made sense to use lyric-based songs as an inspiration. He also credited Italian composer Nino Rota as an influence.
| Track listing | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Title | Length | |||||||
| 1. | "Brothers In a One Hat Town (Overture)" | 5:03 | |||||||
| 2. | "Cackle Bladder" | 2:09 | |||||||
| 3. | "Charleston's Denoument" | 1:14 | |||||||
| 4. | "This Is Camels" | 1:43 | |||||||
| 5. | "Montenegro" | 1:00 | |||||||
| 6. | "Meeting Penelope" | 1:18 | |||||||
| 7. | "An Enlightened Euphoria" | 3:06 | |||||||
| 8. | "Double Dutch Queens" | 1:08 | |||||||
| 9. | "The Curator" | 1:19 | |||||||
| 10. | "The Grecian Docks" | 2:12 | |||||||
| 11. | "Penelope's Theme" | 2:42 | |||||||
| 12. | "The Diamond Dog" | 3:04 | |||||||
| 13. | "The Castle Heist" | 2:53 | |||||||
| 14. | "Mexico" | 2:13 | |||||||
| 15. | "Off-script" | 2:46 | |||||||
| 16. | "An Empty Stage" | 2:53 | |||||||
| 17. | "Cackle Bladder (Revisited)" | 1:17 | |||||||
| 18. | "The Perfect Con" | 6:43 | |||||||
| 19. | "The Fabulist" | 3:29 | |||||||
The Brothers Bloom had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 9, 2008.[13] The film was then screened as the opening night feature at the Boston Independent Film Festival on April 22, 2009. At the Newport Beach Film Fest Johnson won a festival honors award in the category of Outstanding Achievement in Directing.[14] The first seven minutes of the film were posted to the online streaming video site, Hulu, on April 23, 2009.[15]
Review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 64% of critics have given the film a positive review, based on 124 reviews with an average rating of 6.1/10. The site's consensus stated that "Despite strong performances The Brothers Bloom ultimately does not fulfill its lofty ambitions."[16] On Metacritic, the film was assigned a weighted average score of 55 out of 100 based on 26 reviews from mainstream critics.[17]
Claudia Puig writing for USA Today stated that the film "has it all" with an "offbeat perspective" and "magical realism style that works exquisitely." She gave The Brothers Bloom a 3.5 out of 4 and wrote that it "is an often rapturous trot around the globe" but noted that the film "loses some steam in the final half hour."[18] Robert Wilonsky thought that Johnson had "infused The Brothers Bloom with so much heart and beauty that one can and should easily overlook its discomfiting moments." Wilonsky suggested a second viewing of the film is "even more profound and touching".[19]
Roger Ebert commented how the film's "acting is a delight" but it was "too smug and pleased with itself". He continued by complaining that the film had "too many encores and curtain calls"[20] Robert Abele's review of The Brothers Bloom for the Los Angeles Times criticized Brody for over-moping and considered Ruffalo as "out of sorts" but thought Weisz's performance as "the best thing in the movie". Abele also thought Johnson used too many filmmaking quirks and when Johnson was not distracting the audience he had his actors doing it.[21]
The Brothers Bloom was originally to be released in the fall of 2009 but Summit pushed it forward to May.[3] The film opened in four theaters in the U.S. in its first week, earning $90,400. During the memorial day weekend from May 23, 2009 to May 25, 2009, the first weekend after its initial limited release, The Brothers Bloom grossed $495,527, from 52 theaters, ranking it #15. During its wide release weekend starting May 29, 2009, in 148 theaters the film grossed $627,971, ranking it #11. The Brothers Bloom finished its theatrical run after 12 weeks reaching at most 209 theaters during its sixth week. The film has grossed $3,531,756 domestically and $1,997,708 abroad for a total of $5,529,464. This placed it at number 167 for all films released in 2009.[1] The film was released in the UK on 4 June 2010.[22]
The DVD and Blu-ray Disc is available to rent on September 29, 2009 and to own on January 12, 2010.[23]
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