With “Palm Springs,” first-time director Max Barbakow achieved the kind of whirlwind debut most filmmakers only dream of.
The time-loop rom-com, which starred Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti as wedding guests forced to relive the same day over and over again, was the hit of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Neon and Hulu acquired it in a record-breaking sale. The looming pandemic was serendipitous timing for a streaming debut, and “Palm Springs” ended up setting Hulu records when it came out that summer. Barbakow had a bona fide cultural phenomenon on his hands and seemingly became an established Hollywood director overnight.
How do you follow a once-in-a-decade success like “Palm Springs”? Barbakow decided to pivot to a good old-fashioned American heist comedy. His sophomore feature “Brothers” (now streaming on Prime Video) stars Josh Brolin and Peter Dinklage as siblings who went in very different directions after their troubled youths. Dinklage’s Jady Munger spent years in prison for a petty crime they committed together, while Brolin’s Moke narrowly escaped and built a new life for himself on the straight and narrow. But when converging circumstances cause both men to need money in a hurry, they’re forced to paper over years of hard feelings quickly and hit the road to pull a final job that prompts them to reexamine the root causes behind their failure to launch.
Neither Dinklage nor Brolin plays the kind of role you’d expect. Both men became household names by playing intimidating villains and salt-of-the-earth heroes, but “Brothers” sees them flailing as incompetent manchildren who struggle to move past their own failures. The opportunity to play against type in a goofy comedy was an irresistible opportunity for Brolin and Dinklage, the latter of whom brought Barbakow on board after developing the script with screenwriters Macon Blair and Etan Cohen.
In a recent conversation with IndieWire, Barbakow explained that his star-studded cast’s (which also includes Marisa Tomei, Brendan Fraser, and Glenn Close) willingness to get playful didn’t just lead to a fruitful collaboration — it actually enhanced his film’s primary theme of people hiding from their own identities.
“This is a movie about people who are trying to hide their true selves and are playing each other too. So having a group of skilled actors that are playing against type in a comedy too, I think that makes the audience lean in a little bit, and they’re not quite sure what to expect, which only helps the tone of the movie,” Barbakow said. “Everybody jumped in because they were excited to do that. From Glenn to Brendan. I mean, Josh, he has such a big heart as a person, but that dude is in my favorite movies of all time. He is always playing kind of the alpha with a little bit of swagger. This is so different for him, and I know he really enjoyed it. It was particularly fulfilling helping him find out who this guy was.”
Brolin’s commitment to shedding his swaggering alpha persona was put to the test in a key early scene. While Jady insists on taking a detour on their crime spree to visit a pen pal girlfriend he “met” in prison (Tomei), Moke is left to kill time alone with her pet orangutan — who forces him to perform a borderline sexual act that’s far more intimate than anything Jady is doing in the bedroom.
Directing Josh Brolin in an orangutan romance sequence is not the kind of situation any filmmaker expects to end up in, no matter how successful your first film was. Adding to the absurdity was the fact that his scene partner was played by an actual motion capture actor who was a veteran of the “Planet of the Apes” franchise. Barbakow explained that the ridiculousness of the situation prompted him to embrace the absurdity of the project and accept that his A-list actors were firmly along for the comedic ride.
“Devon Dalton played Samuel. She’s an amazing motion capture performer who’s been in all the ‘Planet of the Apes’ movies. So you’re not only directing Josh, but you’re directing an orangutan, who is a mo-cap performer in a suit, which made it even odder, like something out of ‘Holy Motors,‘” he said. “It was very strange. It was also important to me that [that] scene goes sideways. We wanted to really sell a moment of true connection between those two characters to earn the flip. So it was a bizarre day, I think, for Josh for sure. But so fulfilling when we finally got the effects in there, and we actually scored that scene with the sound of the orangutan to help animate the facial expression, which was an interesting way to do it. I hadn’t done that before.”
From CGI primates to golf cart chases to an explosion-filled climactic sequence inside a shopping mall, “Brothers” was filled with a level of spectacle that eluded Barbakow on his smaller-scale debut feature. But looking back, the filmmaker explained that he relished the challenge of working with a larger team to bring the action comedy script to life.
“You just try to problem-solve every little notion, and hopefully, you solve enough problems that you could execute the vision that you have,” he said. “Everybody was so excited to try to realize the insanity that this movie was. It made it a real pleasure to figure out.”
“Brothers” is now available to stream on Prime Video.
