Jim Sheridan’s newest film ‘Brothers’ wrenchingly powerful

Sheridan is also clear about why he has decided this time to premiere his film in the U.S. rather than Europe (“In America,” his 2003 film opened in England where it was slated by the critics, an experience that has taught Sheridan a valuable lesson).

“A movie has to open in America before it goes back home. They made the mistake of opening ‘Once’ and ‘The Crying Game’ in Ireland, and they did no business.

“It’s only when it exists within the American framework that it exists as a movie. What people think is we never heard of that, it didn’t open in America, so it can’t be a real movie.”

Sibling rivalry drives a lot of the action in “Brothers,” and it’s a theme that Sheridan can deeply identify with himself.

“I think there was a lot of vying for attention in our own family in Dublin, so it’s fairly easy for me to transfer that into an American family,” says Sheridan.

“Those scenes with Jake and Sam Shepard (the noted playwright and actor), they’re just me and my dad. That’s all that is you know? I kind of understood where these characters were coming from.”

The intensity of the connection between the two “Brothers” in the film, and the way their affection can spill so easily over into violence was something that Sheridan feels is more Irish that American, and he had his work cut out persuading his two male leads to roll with it.

“Jake had some problems with a few scenes because I’m not sure it’s a natural part of the American kid growing up to fight as much as we do in Ireland,” says Sheridan.

“But the Cahills are an Irish American family so I felt like pushing it in that direction. I think the setup is very Irish too.”

Sheridan knows all about the long history of the Irish in the U.S. armed forces, and so the banter between the two “Brothers” and their father in the film reminds him of chats he had with his own dad in Ireland.

“’You’re like a parrot,’” my Dad would say to me, ‘you mimic everything. Why not mimic your brother?’ I can still hear him saying it to me. With that tone in his voice that said it all. The father in those scenes sounds exactly like my own,” Sheridan feels.

In the process of making “Brothers” Sheridan noticed that each of the movies he makes often have a theme that involves putting a family back together. It’s an impulse that comes directly from his own experience of personal tragedy, and his desire to set it right.

“In my own family what happened was that my brother died. We had a lodging house and at the moment of death all the neighbors were coming in and my dad was crying with them, but not with my ma,” recalls Sheridan.

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Nster.com