The twin brothers call themselves The Bang Bang, a 1975 Brit band from The
Head, whose sound thrashes violently between Bowie, Morrison and The Sex
Pistols.
Tom's the soulful purist, and Barry's the tortured rebel, but they spend a lot of time whispering in each other's ears. It's easy for them: They're conjoined at the stomach, and they share a kidney through a bridge of flesh at their midsection. A medical separation would probably kill them. Glam rock will do it anyway.
"Brothers of The Head" is one melancholy, absorbing examination of exploitation and creativity. Easy to admire but hard to enjoy, it's
presented by directors Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe as a rockumentary looking back at the short, sad life of The Bang Bang. The camerawork, however, tells
us it's fiction cleverly structured as "fact."
Pepe and Fulton stir the
music docs of the 1960s and 1970s with sci-fi writer Brian Aldiss' 1977 short story for an unsettling brew of noise, sex, warped intimacy and tyranny. And the numerous concert scenes are pitch-perfect recreations of the hypnotic train wrecks that were the earliest punk shows. It's not music, but a melodic rage of the id, and you will not look away.
Tom (Harry Treadway) and Barry (Luke Treadway) are "sold" to mogul Zak Bedderwick (Howard Attfield) for a one-year band contract and shuttled away to a private estate for development. Neither of them can play an instrument, and both are startlingly naive - somebody shoves a bottle of wine in Barry's hand, and he blows on the mouth of it. A manager (Sean Harris) is hired to shape Barry up a bit with a couple good punches to the face, while a guitarist (Brian Dick) pulls the duo through the rabbit hole of rock music
and the lifestyle that accompanies it.
Tom and Barry don't necessarily become musicians so much as they channel their rage into the melodic screaming we charitably call punk music. Their
moody nihilism is catchy and one "journalist," Laura Ashworth (Tania Emery), is particularly enthralled with Tom. Think there'll be a rivalry between
her and Barry? Isn't this a rockumentary? Laura's presence inspires the movie's funniest line, delivered with sincerity: "If you're in trouble, and you need a friend, the last person you want comin' round the corner is Laura Ashworth."
As it lays its groundwork, "Brothers" suffers from character overload. Fulton and Pepe needlessly insert shots of an aborted biopic, "Two-Way Romeo," as a stab at humor. Commentary from Bedderwick's lawyer, Aldiss himself, filmmaker Ken Russell and some extra backstory make the first half-hour a tough slog.
Audiences need to tough it out because Tom and Barry's awkward first show turns on the energy, and the movie is a compelling spiral down from there.
As the twins, Luke and Harry Treadway simply are Tom and Barry. We have no preconceptions of the actors to suggest otherwise. Their performances are raw, brave, engrossing and physically demanding - it can't be easy to
perform cartwheels while artificially attached to each other. Emery gets special mention as the angelic, borderline creepy Laura. Although Laura seems to be falsely accused of a particularly cruel act, we can sense she's
at least thought of it. That blank, adoring stare of hers turns to something else when Barry takes the mic.
Most indelible are the abuses these brothers endure. Some of it's physical, but it's mostly emotional, and after some friendly influence, self-inflicted.
Watching "Brothers of the Head" I thought about those 14-year-old girls plucked out of malls to become Paris runway models, after which they're suddenly surrounded by every earthly pleasure and pain they can imagine. It all feels good, it all feels wrong, maybe you make it, maybe you don't, but those girls, like the brothers, eventually want to make it home to a house, a bed, an open field, their own corner of their own room. Sooner or later, the Bang Bang of it all is gone, gone.
