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Sometimes the film feels a bit too much like an exercise in showy visuals and oddball hipsterisms. Some of its randomness just feels totally arbitrary and superfluous and outside the realm of any possibility, but perhaps that's the point. In a sense, Bloom is a film about how the "deception" of a fanciful film (like the deception of a heist or con) is its own sort of truth. At one point, Penelope shows Bloom a lens-less camera that she made out of a hollowed-out watermelon, and the two of them get to talking about the nature of photography and art. "It's not reproduction," Penelope says of the images her watermelon camera captures. "It's a lie about the truth. It's storytelling."

The brothers and Penelope looking for the next big con

The Brothers Bloom is about twisting the truth, blurring it, spinning it, and yet ultimately expressing it in a way that it can be understood. Stephen and Bloom are never completely honest with each other (or with anyone), and yet they love each other as much as two brothers could. And the same could be said for the film itself: it's never completely forthright and leads us to believe a number of contradictory things at various points in the process. But eventually, in a roundabout manner, the truth wins out. And along the way we had fun and experienced some beautiful things that may or may not have been "true" or "real." But no matter. Our experience of them was true, which in a movie theater is all we have to go on. We know the images being projected are not "real" in the sense of physical or historical presence and yet we suspend our disbelief and let them affect us as if they were.

The Brothers Bloom is a film that is from start to finish adamantly unreal. It exists in a magical story world where heiresses can juggle chainsaws and con men spend their time playing shuffleboard on 1920s-style yachts. But it's also a film in which people are shown loving each other, laughing, and doing a Bolero dance under the moonlight. It's a film with beautiful oceans, sunsets, and epiphanies. That is, it's a film with a good deal of truth.

Talk About It

1. Do you think The Brothers Bloom is correct in its thematic assumption that "we write our own stories?" Is this a film about free will?
   
   
2. What do you think of Stephen's final act and how it relates to the rest of the film? Is it just a dramatic end to his story that he planned all along? Or did life get the best of his plans?
   
   
3. How is the brotherly love between Stephen and Bloom expressed in the film?
   
   

The Family Corner

The Brothers Bloom is rated PG-13, mostly for language (a few f-words) and violence (lots of explosions, guns, etc… but not a lot of blood). There is also a scene of two characters in bed together, but no actual sex or nudity is seen. Overall it is a fun, relatively clean film that families could probably enjoy together. It has a consistently positive attitude and should leave viewers with a smile on their face.

Photos © Summit Entertainment

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