The Brothers McMullen

The father is dead and at the cemetery the mother tells her sons something: she spent thirty five years with a man she did not love and is now going to Ireland, to the man she loved when she was young. The three sons stay on Long Island. Jack is married and his wife wants a child; he starts seeing someone else. Barry runs from relationships and is trying to write a screenplay. Patrick was raised Catholic and is with a Jewish woman; he thinks he ought to marry and does not want to. The three end up in the same house. For three months none of them can decide. Edward Burns writes, directs and plays Barry. Michael McGlone, Connie Britton and Jack Mulcahy are in the cast. It is an American production. This is Burns's first film; it was made on a very low budget, shot at weekends and after work. It won the grand jury prize at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival and became one of the examples of independent cinema of that moment. The matter it treats is the guilt left by a Catholic upbringing; all three brothers are wrestling with the same thing. The narrative rests on talk; there is little event and the scenes are in kitchens, cars and gardens. The film leaves its women at the edge and that was criticised. The narrative gives none of the brothers an easy resolution and all three pay something. Burns went on making films in the same vein afterwards. Its limit is the production; the image quality is low, the acting uneven, and the pace flat. Who it is for: viewers who like nineties American independent cinema and films built on talk. Who it is not for: it is small in scale, uneventful, and the ending unresolved.