Two Gates of Sleep

Brothers Jack and Louis live with their seriously ill mother deep in the woods on the Mississippi-Louisiana border. The fleeting glances to which their taciturn communication is limited are enough to convey the palpable tension between the men. But they temporarily suppress their differences as they seek, during her last days, to make the woman who bore them as comfortable as possible. The inevitable happens, however, one quiet afternoon and the two brothers know that they must respect their mother’s final wish rather than bow to social convention. So they set out with a crude, homemade coffin across swamp and impenetrable wood. “Visually captivating” is an over-used collocation but it suits to a T this meditative portrait of a family living literally on the edge of society. The compelling story provides an indirect commentary upon the transience of the physical, and also – in all its immensity – the unfathomable spiritual aspect of nature. The movie thereby aligns the director with the great world filmmakers of the 1960s and beyond, and also with similarly “tending” contemporary directors such as Lisandro Alonso and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)