An astonishing twinning of wild imagination and drop-dead realism, Brothers of the Head is simply the most poignant and exciting documentary about sibling rivalry and revelry ever made. Technically, it's a mockumentary, but there's precious little mockery in this tale of Tom and Barry Howe (brothers Harry and Luke Treadway), conjoined twins who end up fronting a '70s glam-punk outfit known as the Bang Bang. With the withdrawn, shoe-gazing Tom flailing away at his guitar while his more emotionally volatile brother Barry spits literary invective into the microphone, his right arm slung by necessity over Tom's shoulders, their act is like a David Lynch opera with a libretto by Iggy Pop. Never much good at being twins, the Howes, once in the limelight, excel at all things rock 'n' roll, including sex, drugs and fisticuffs.
Directors Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe previously helmed Lost in La Mancha, a real documentary ' about Terry Gilliam's disastrous efforts to film Don Quixote ' that felt fictitious. Brothers of the Head is the exact opposite, and it's so cunning in employing (fake) footage culled from a never-completed previous documentary on the Bang Bang that it ends up seeming more artistically, morally and spiritually honest than any dozen real documentaries you'd care to name.
