SOMETHING IS EVOCATIVE IN THE STATE OF DENMARK.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

SUSANNE BIER'S intense masterpiece, ``Brothers,'' breathes fresh life into the stuff of ancient melodrama through its sharp attention to the kinds of small details that reveal large amounts of information. Bier's camera homes in on looks, gestures and the natural rhythms of life with such straightforward precision that when the film's sibling rivalry turns into the kind of Greek tragedy that George Lucas can only dream about, you're left absolutely devastated.

Take the movie's beginning, a car ride home. Jannik (Nikolaj Lie Kass) has just been released from prison, where he served a few months for his part in a botched bank robbery. His older brother, Michael (Ulrich Thomsen), warmly greets him and the two make small talk, joking about their parents, amiably kidding each other about their personal quirks.

Then Michael, the good, dutiful family man, makes a mistake and suggests that Jannik return to the bank and make amends with a teller he assaulted during the robbery. Jannik blows up, slams on the car's emergency break and stalks into an open field. He'll walk the rest of the way, thank you. The tension between the brothers - the favored one and the screw-up - explodes, a sign of detonations to come.

``Brothers'' is about how family members find certain roles (in this case, the good and bad son) and continue to fill those roles no matter how much time passes. Like Bier's last movie, ``Open Hearts'' (also by ``Brothers'' screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen), ``Brothers'' features an abrupt change that forces the family members to re-evaluate their roles, their lives and what they must do to survive.

Even though she isn't playing one of the title characters, the soul of the film belongs to Connie Nielsen (``The Devil's Advocate,'' ``Gladiator''), who plays Michael's wife, Sarah. Circumstances cause Sarah to make a series of painful adjustments and Nielsen, speaking her native Danish tongue, rolls with the punches, revealing her character's complicated and conflicted inner life.

Bier uses the unadorned Dogma style in a way that's powerful and not self-conscious. ``Brothers'' is a movie about emotional connections: husband to wife, parent to child, brother to brother. It shows the duality of these attachments, tenuous and deep, able to be destroyed or perhaps deepened by unspeakable tragedy. The results will floor you.

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

glenn.whipp(at)dailynews.com

BROTHERS - Four stars

(R: violence, language, brief nudity)

Starring: Connie Nielsen, Nikolaj Lie Kass, Ulrich Thomsen.

Director: Susanne Bier.

Running time: 1 hr. 50 min.

Playing: Landmark's Nuart Theater in West Los Angeles.

In a nutshell: Sibling rivalry brought to life in astounding fashion. In Danish with English subtitles.

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Connie Nielsen and Ulrich Thomsen star in the riveting sibling-rivalry story ``Brother.''