Brother in Every Inch definitely offers the world something it’s never seen before — the training of Russian air force pilots on an actual Russian air base — but guess what: It looks exactly flight training in any other country.
All the same, this second feature from director Alexander Zolotukhin (after his debut three years ago with A Russian Youth) does take you somewhere new as it examines the progress of twin brothers as they undergo the rigors of learning to fly jet fighters, even if it’s presented in a semi-arty way that is both aesthetically pleasing and dramatically skimpy.
This visually entrancing short feature (just 80 minutes long) premiered in the Encounters section of the Berlin Film Festival.The brothers, Andrey and Mitya, played by actual identical twins Sergey and Nikolay Zhuravlev, are quite good-looking, and all but inseparable, except when they are obliged to fly on their own to make the grade as pilots.
On their first solo flights, Andrey does well but Mitya botches his, following a pattern that appears to have been set years before — Andrey is capable and reliable, while Mitya is a screw-up or, from appearances, just a dim bulb who’s seemingly always been dependent upon his brother to bail him out.For the most part, Zolotukhin doesn’t build scenes in the conventional manner.
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