The best brothers

The two best brothers doing films today? Not the Coens, but the Dardennes, the Belgian guys who have made some really great movies about real people, the down and out, on the margins of society, in the industrial flatlands of Belgium, spectators upon the prosperity of the EEC. They've done a trilogy, of sorts, The Son (I think that was the title), the amazing L'enfant, and what I saw last night, Lorna's Silence (maybe they should have called it "The Mother," which would complete the trilogy of titles and would make a lot of sense, as much of the story concerns whether Lorna is pregnant or not). These movies are unrelentless, unflinching, and uncompromising. They never narrate a back story. It's as if you jump right into Lorna's life and you figure things out as you go along, exactly as if a camera were attached to your shoulder, right now, and the movie would begin, and how long would it take for viewers to learn who you are, where you're from, what makes you tick? But it's not like documentary or reality TV, because these films take on a person in crisis, faced with an incredibly difficult moral decision, and they follow the plot through to its sometimes (not always) terrible conclusion. I won't say too much about the plot because part of the beauty and challenge of this film is to let it unfold before you and to figure out what's happening as more "pieces of the puzzle" come into view. I found it totally credible, sad, smart, and challenging. Is anybody in America making movies that are anywhere near as smart as these? (Maybe the guys who did Chop Shop and Man Push Cart). They're like small novels, and they're windows on people among us whom we walk write by, dismiss, ignore. I hope these guys make many more great films!