3 out of 5

Directed by: Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky

I was but a wee kipper of 7 or so in 1990, when the events documentaried in Brother’s Keeper occurred.  And while I wouldn’t expect wee-kipper me to be all that much interested in whatever was going on in the world outside of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I have always been a few degrees more “I don’t care” isolated than most, so: I have no idea whether or not the contested murder of farmer William Ward was a big enough deal that this film – were I more socially aware – would have captured interest simply for its subject matter.  I can intuit from a Connie Chung interview partially shown in the film and the Roger Ebert review of the flick that it was a legit ‘event,’ and maybe, along with O.J., one of those early examples of when media was giving the world a larger reach / opinion regarding the nonsense occurring elsewhere, but, all of that aside – without that context – it’s hard to muster much feeling regarding the subjects.

That’s not to say it’s not an interesting, head-shaking-in-disbelief tale, but my standards for documentaries often ask what I’m bush-beating around above: would I care about this if I had no reason to?

Brother’s Keeper depicts the events around the death of Ward, one of four mostly illiterate brothers who lived in a rundown farmhouse together, stinkin’ up the joint, sleeping in the same bed, waved to by the locals but maybe considered oddballs; town fixtures, if you will.  During the investigation into Ward’s death, “confessions” of murder from brother Delbert are drawn, and the case goes down some bizarre pathways of adding a sexual element as well, due to the discovery of some sperm on the body.  Directors Berlinger and Sinofsky are excellent at capturing this naturalistically, circling around interviews on both sides of opinion (yes, it was “murder,” but an act of mercy; no, how could you think such a thing of such simple folk) and choosing to focus more on the way the town grows to support their own then making an grand direct statements about media or the sociology of stereotypes and assumptions regarding people of a certain type.  However, going back to the context, I feel that this approach, which essentially strays from any sensationalist angle, would be riveting (a la that Ebert review) if I’d been relatively freshly exposed to only the sensationalist stuff at the time.  Removed from that, it’s sort of hard to see how this was a big deal; how this could ever have been mistaken for a murder.  There aren’t real stakes in the film – it’s almost a feel-good experience.  And I accept that that is a structural decision, and I was not bored while viewing.  But years on, this feels like a minor footnote, as opposed to, say, the recent O.J. series, which makes the historical impact of it clear even if you didn’t live through it.  True, that’s a lame comparison, as we’re talking a celebrity trial versus what was a flash-in-the-pan focus, but that’s why we’re at three stars: Brother’s Keeper is an interesting story, but, for better or worse, as with the Ward brothers, it’s out of sight, out of mind.