AFF 2023 Correspondence: The Highest Brasil Review

The beauty and power of a baby blue tracksuit gets the spotlight it deserves in director and writer Jeremy Curl’s debut feature, The Highest Brasil. This was another fest film that I went into with zero background knowledge, which may be the best way to approach it.

Before reading on: If you like nice cold shots of Irish coastal towns or people wearing matching hot pink hoodies, drop everything and catch this one because it’s definitely for you. Otherwise, if you need a little more meat on the bone to see what this is all about, keep reading.

Set near a picturesque port town in Ireland, Curl’s film follows the plight of stoic fisherman Seamus (Ger Staunton), a bearded fellow decked out in cozy sweaters who spends his days not catching much fish. However, there’s something obviously hanging over the man. We see him do his daily tasks with nary a smile to be seen, and when he’s not doing that, he’s wandering fields, turning his clothes inside out, and leaving flowers on rocks in his free time before heading home to have quiet dinners with his American wife, Kathleen (Jennifer Breslin).

Kathleen too seems to be trapped in a glacial freeze of emotions, which makes her job at the nearby psychiatric institution more challenging, especially as she deals with one particularly vulgar and violent patient (Feargal Power). Instead of focusing on this couple’s growing disinterest in each other, the film pivots toward the more surreal when Seamus comes across Brendan (Stephen Doring), a big, Gandalf-bearded smooth talker who claims to hold the secrets to happiness. Never mind the man wears a dated tracksuit every single day, or the fact that he holds his daily club meetings in an abandoned mall with support from a young Russian woman (Angelica Seleznova), the kooky Brendan has what the dour Seamus needs: happiness, or at least the path to it.

As Seamus attends more meetings with the other acolytes of Brendan, the bearded self-help guru reveals (through a scratchy video presentation that’s funny, artistically impressive, and just slightly scary) that he can grant his members access to the mythic location of High Brasil, a land full of pleasure and happiness. Is this place real or is it simply a fake carrot offered by a Santa Claus looking conman? To Curl’s credit, the filmmaker seems to lean a certain way on that question as he has Brendan spout off ridiculous and slightly problematic claims about the island. (For example: “Pleasure maidens” await the men of the group when they arrive to High Brasil. If you’re a woman in the group though, who’s to say if you actually get a “pleasure man” too.)

Nevertheless, Curl is wise enough to the power of mystery to keep giving an ear to Brendan, a man who may actually just be the reincarnation of Irish legend Saint Brendan himself. Curl and producer Natalie Gariban in their post-screening Q&A noted that this a film about the temptation of wondering about if the grass is always greener elsewhere. Is it worth it to go after something that may not even exist? When does a desperate reach for answers transform into blind loyalty to some non-physical idea? Is that a bad thing, anyway?

The Highest Brasil brings these questions up in interesting ways on page and on screen. Curl’s script throughout sounds similar to a Yorgos Lanthimos production, with characters saying surreal and off-kilter things with straight faces. The cinematography also leans towards some of Lanthimos’ works like The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer with its cold, empty spaces in both nature and manmade structures. Like those films, even with a strong sense of emptiness, the visuals still capture the bizarre beauty of a cold, zany world. Every performer (all of whom were unknowns to me) brings their A-games to capture Curl’s dryly funny dialogue.

The main standout of the troupe arrives in Doring’s imposing Brendan, a man who even though he looks like a guy you’d see digging out of a trash can behind a Chili’s, still holds a demanding and almost terrifying command of any room he enters. Curl positions this character as a sort of unstoppable deity to all the characters he comes in touch with. From his believers to his doubters, Brendan has everyone in his hands. But as happens with any film touching on assimilation and blind faith, it’s hard to believe at times that some of the characters would do certain things that Brendan eventually asks of them. These moments feel more like things Curly wants to have in the movie rather than making much narrative sense.

When the final act comes around and Brendan’s merry band of followers continue to hesitantly or steadfastly follow his commands, Curl seems to want to reengage audiences with Seamus and Kathleen’s own relationship, which for the bulk of the movie takes a backseat. It feels like a portion of the story that Curl simply journeyed away from due to getting caught up in hanging out with Brendan and his group. When he tries to connect these two worlds of Seamus’ life together, it feels like a last act pivot, rather than one that was naturally built up to. But Curl somehow manages to get these two pieces to fit together in a final scene that feels like both a punchline and a statement of doom. If anything, all of this seems to point to a burgeoning filmmaker who has great ideas but is still figuring out how to get them to connect.

For a feature film debut, The Highest Brasil is pretty good stuff. It’s got a memorable style, a strong sense of dark comedy, and just enough genuine creepiness to keep audiences on its toes. Unlike Brendan, The Highest Brasil doesn’t have the answers to life’s problems. However, it does have a few pretty funny jokes about them in its pocket.