Brother Carl

director: Susan Sontag

original title: Bröder Carl

country: Sweden

year: 1971

running time: 97 min.

synopsis

Two couples are going through a critical period. Karen and Peter have a six-year-old mute schizophrenic girl, Anna. Their relationship is cold and hostile. Léna and Martin have been divorced for five years. Léna is a well-known actress and Martin is an artistic director of a ballet company living on an island with his friend Carl. Léna and Karen go to visit them. Sontag got her second Nordic chance and decided to make the whole film in Swedish. She considered it a great test of her own imagination, comparing it to Carl Theodor Dreyer's last film or to the films of Jean-Marie Straub. But after the filming was finished, she admitted that the attempt had failed…

„So that women no longer suffer the condemnation preventing them from expressing their feelings. (...) Carnal love will not disappear because of this, nor will couples cease to form; only men and women will cease to judge each other as potential sexual partners from their very first moments spent together.”

biography

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) was an influential American essayist, publicist, writer, director, human rights defender, and female emancipation activist. Her universal activities remain an impressive characteristic of this Renaissance woman of modern history. She became known in 1964 with her text Notes on 'Camp'. Her essays On Photography, Under the Sign of Saturn and Regarding the Pain of Others, and her novel The Volcano Lover were translated into Czech. Her interest in film is present in her entire work.