Brother's Keeper (1992)
PBS, American Playhouse

Description

This acclaimed documentary explores the odd world of the four elderly Ward brothers--disheveled, illiterate farmers who have lived their entire lives in a dilapidated two room shack. When William Ward dies in the bed that he shared with his brother Delbert, police officers become suspicious. Citing motives ranging from sex crime to euthanasia, they arrest Delbert for murder, penetrating the isolated, antiquated world that left "the boys" forgotten eccentrics for so many years.

As the hazy case against Delbert is investigated and brought to trial, the previously distant population of their idyllic New York town, Munnsville, warmly embrace the remaining Ward brothers, rallying in small town solidarity against the seemingly corrupt urban authorities.

Tags

1990s, New York, USA

Collected reviews and ratings

10 Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

"Brother's Keeper," the year's best documentary, has an impact and immediacy that most fiction films can only envy. [...] Seeing this film, I got a new appreciation for how deeply the notion of civil liberties is embedded in our national consciousness.
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10 Washington Post | Desson Howe

Don't walk into "Brother's Keeper" thinking it's just another documentary. Don't miss seeing it for the same reason. This coverage of a fratricide trial in central New York State is structured like a Hollywood murder trial. You'll find yourself rooting for the hero, hissing at the villains and praying for the right decision.
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10 DVD Talk | John Wallis

Part of the Ward's story is how this trial and controversy opened them up to the outside world and the filmmakers were part of that; therefore that facilitated their becoming more than just observers. Also, their affection for the Wards in no way effects how they portray the facts of what may or may not have happened involving Bill's death.
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10 Entertainment Weekly | Alice King

On its 10th anniversary, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's clear-eyed but sympathetic chronicle of an alleged fratricide in a central New York hamlet is as engrossing as ever.
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9.4 DVD Verdict | Bill Gribon

This is a special film, one that tells a grand story evocatively and insightfully. A decade after its release, it's nice to see IFC and Docurama releasing this now seemingly "lost" classic. But it should never have been cast out into the wilderness in the first place.
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9.2 The Onion A.V. Club | Nathan Rabin

Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's warmly affectionate directorial debut engenders an enormous amount of sympathy for the Wards (who were so smitten with their chroniclers that they named turkeys after them), but to their credit, the film is ambiguous about Delbert's ultimate guilt or innocence.
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9.2 Old School Reviews | John Nesbit

Brother's Keeper is a layered work that not only explores this specific case and paints first hand pictures of rural life, but also strikes at the very heart of the judicial system in the U.S. and the common man's sense of civil liberties.
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9.0 Amazon user reviews

As a slice-of-life study of eccentricity, country-folk stereotypes, small-town wisdom, and the power of the media, Brother's Keeper is funny, fascinating, and full of compassionate humanity. It's also a riveting courtroom mystery with characters that no casting director could improve upon, tracking the course of justice while leaving the viewer to mull over the truth behind Delbert Ward's alleged crime.
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9.0 filmcritic.com | Christopher Null

Endlessly fascinating, I found my stomach in my throat when I recently watched the new DVD release -- a decade after first seeing the film and knowing full well what the verdict was.
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9.0 New York Times | Vincent Canby

It's a rich slice of Americana that would seem to belong to an earlier, pre-television era, except that television comes to play a large part in Delbert's story. It's also about an aspect of life in rural America that's seldom seen by people who drive through it, and seldom if ever glimpsed in movies.
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8.8 Austin Chronicle | Marjorie Baumgarten

So fascinating is Brother's Keeper that you almost don't quarrel with things like the biased portraits of the prosecuting team and the Deliverance-like banjo-shuffling soundtrack. Brother's Keeper intrigue factor is enormously high and, it could almost be said, that this movie is good enough to be fiction.
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7.5 ReelViews | James Berardinelli

Brother's Keeper is a remarkable documentary that chronicles the death of 64 year old Bill Ward, the arrest of his 59 year old brother Delbert for the killing, and the subsequent murder trial (and verdict). Put together on a miniscule budget, the film has all the power, drama, and tension of a big-budget Hollywood thriller.
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