SXSW Review: ‘Brother Verses Brother’ is a Wondrously Captivating Musical Family Odyssey

Family relationships can be tricky, and those who spend plenty of time together don’t necessarily get along any better than those who only call each other a few times a year on birthdays and holidays. Working together can create an even more chaotic bunch, since personal and professional lives aren’t particularly separate and issues from either world can bleed into the other. Brother Verses Brother is a marvelous cinematic specimen, with two real-life twin brothers playing versions of themselves in a magnificent musical odyssey across San Francisco.

Ari Gold and Ethan Gold are the Brothers Gold (the Gold Brothers wasn’t available on social media). They’re both musicians whose talent is matched by their sarcasm, which comes out most when they’re talking to each other. Their father is dying, and they’re spending the day walking the streets and going from venue to venue performing and discussing life, especially as it relates to their father’s impending death. Each song they sing is layered with a biting critique of their relationship, often directed from Ethan to Ari about just how much he can’t stand the sibling who’s always by his side.

This film declares itself in its opening moments as an instance of live cinema, a concept popularized by Francis Ford Coppola, who has joined the film as an executive producer. These two really are brothers and their father really is dying, and the entire film is improvised as they walk. The film’s production designer is officially credited as “The Streets of San Francisco,” which provide a formidable playground for the Brothers Gold as they roam around making music and dissecting the complexities of their relationship, both with each other and with the parent they’re about to lose, through song.

Brother Verses Brother is a fantastic title that merely serves as an appetizer for the linguistic cleverness of this film. One song is all about how “at least I won’t have you dragging me down,” a dramatically unsubtle dig at the partnership that doesn’t always benefit Ethan, who also declares that people would “pay good money to wake up screaming like I do.” There’s more outright comedy too, like when the lyric “poor child” sounds much more like “pork chop,” drastically changing the meaning of a song in a way that takes away its poignancy and instead leads to one of this film’s best assets, the bickering of its brothers.

That sibling dynamic is the core of this film, and it’s one that shouldn’t necessarily be termed a rivalry since the two are obviously on good enough terms in real life that they’d be willing to make a film like this together. All the digs seem like they come from a good place and are meant mostly in jest, and this is a film that feels balanced because, even though Ari feels like he might be the less stable of the two, he doesn’t express the same bitterness his brother does, more content with whatever mess his life has become. Regardless of how much their real lives line up with these filmed versions, this is an extraordinary duo that spectacularly carries this film.

Fans of movies like Once will find plenty to love here since, though this isn’t a romance, there’s something so magical and natural about how these brothers move around their city, using the backdrop of each scene to add to the power of each musical number. While live cinema may not work in every case, this is a fantastic example of how it can be completely terrific, telling a simple story in an imaginative and deeply engaging manner, a celebration of music that doubles as a meditation on life and loss.

Movie Rating: 8/10