With two brothers who have been conning friends, neighbors, and complete strangers since their pre-adolescent days at its center; one beautiful billionaire who has spent the last 15 years doing nothing but collecting hobbies quickly pulled into its fold; and a few other nefarious characters like “the Belgian,” “the Russians,” and a one-eyed man named Diamond Dog also along for the ride, by all appearances, The Brothers Bloom seems the perfect recipe for the next best con movie. But in much the same way that every story that Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) and Bloom (Adrien Brody) tell is not what it seems, The Brothers Bloom is not much of a con movie at all. If you are looking for intrigue, it will not satisfy. If you are looking for twists and turns around every corner, its methodical and repetitive story may leave you yawning. But if instead you look at it as a movie that is less about the genius of deception and more about the nature of the stories and authors that define our lives, The Brothers Bloom is still a fascinating ride.
From brothers Stephen and Bloom’s first con in grade school to the con they have designed to be their last, central to The Brothers Bloom is Bloom’s desire to get out of the game. As we see in his eyes for the millisecond he believes in the con he and Stephen have made up to fool their classmates, in his spirit is a deep desire to believe in something real. As he tells Stephen after yet another perfectly-executed con 25 years later, “I can’t keep doing this anymore. I can’t keep waking up next to another person who thinks they know me. … I want a real thing. I want an unwritten life.” But, of course, since Stephen refuses to let Bloom go quite that easily, what we get is another hour and half exploring what it looks like to live within a story that is already written, to steal the pen and write your story yourself, and, in the end, to step into a story that is both penned by a greater hand and developed by your own.
As we see within minutes of meeting the grown-up brothers, their schemes have definitely been paying off and paying well. But as Bloom illustrates as he greets each new farce of Stephen’s with more and more reluctance, when the only payoffs we receive are given based on stories that aren’t true and people who aren’t real, it’s difficult to feel like they are really ours. As Bloom tells a woman who offers herself to him in celebration of another job well done, “He wrote me as the vulnerable antihero and that’s why you think you want to kiss me… it’s a con.” And as anyone who has returned to their hometown only to be seen as someone they haven’t been in ten years or tried to be someone they aren’t to impress a new group of friends or romantic interest, no matter how much love, admiration, or trust we may be able to gain with an act, when that act isn’t real, it means nothing.
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