SXSW 2025 Review: BROTHER VERSES BROTHER, A Live Cinema Musical With A Huge Heart
Twin brothers roam the streets of San Francisco in search of their AWOL father in Ari Gold’s blissfully introspective live cinema musical, Brother Verses Brother.
The fact that Brother Verses Brother recently added Francis Ford Coppola to its credit block as executive producer says a lot about this charming, unpredictable experiment in live cinema. Written by brothers Ethan and Ari Gold, the film follows fictionalized versions of the identical twins as they crisscross San Francisco’s North Beach in real time while searching for their AWOL father.
Ethan is desperate to be understood by his father, legendary writer and Beat contemporary Herbert Gold. Dad is 96 years old and when he doesn’t show up for the bar performance that Ethan and Ari have set up, they get a bit antsy and strike out to find him. Meanwhile, also performing at the bar is the charming Louise (Lara Louise), a lovely sylph of a woman who puts stars in Ari’s eyes. The brothers join up with Louise as they skip from open mic to open mic, performing, pondering the meaning of life, and examining all the ways in which they have gone about it all wrong.
What follows is a ninety-minute single take musical that does more to levitate the spirits of the viewer than a hundred Wickeds ever could. There is love, there is loss; betrayal, ennui, ecstasy, agony, and lots of petty bickering. It feels real. Along the way they bump into friends who become foes, relationships are birthed and die in almost the same breath, and every bit of it happens live in front of the viewers’ eyes.
Though Brother Verses Brother is only Ari’s third feature, he has been behind the camera directing short films for thirty years. Ethan, on the other hand primarily works as a musician, having composed for many of his brother’s films alongside a solo career apart from the film industry. Even though this is only his second feature acting credit, Ethan feels very natural on screen – a characteristic no doubt helped along by gently massaging what seems to be a long running chemistry between him and his brother.
Even though a project like this is necessarily meticulously rehearsed and shot, Brother Verses Brother still feels loose enough that the audience believes in the experience. Ethan’s desperate desire to play for his father a song he wrote specifically for the occasion drives him to extraordinary lengths when the time comes to find him. Ari’s search for love and a partner to share a life with blooms over the course of the film. However, in the end, the film is a testament to the brothers’ love for their father.
Not to spoil too much, but in the end, they do find him, and in those final moments all of their insecurities are laid bare as they each attempt to show their true, authentic selves to their dad. It is tender and heartbreaking, a kind of genuine familial love that is rarely reflected on screen.
What Brother Verses Brother manages to put on screen is nothing like any film I’ve seen in recent years, or perhaps ever. It is a real, true discovery of a talent and a form that I didn’t realize I was missing. Watching these twins discuss their futures while essentially traveling through their past as the wander the city in which they were raised would be beautiful enough but add in Ethan’s rousing music and their deeply relatable squabbling and it just punctuates the film perfectly. Rarely do I feel privileged to have seen a film, but after watching Brother Verses Brother, I feel like I was privy to real lives, and I am honored.
