After that fearful plea for help, there is a moment of tenderness between the two, but when the daughter speaks of her absent brother the atmosphere freezes again.
The diary weaves through every social stratum, from the hovels where the brothers sought atmosphere for Germinie Lacerteux to dinners with great men of the day.
But he had five older brothers, and a different atmosphere prevailed in the basement, where they hung out; their tastes ran more to Rick James, Bootsy Collins, and Prince.
Warchus likens the tense, brittle, dysfunctional domestic milieu of Sicilia to the emotional tenor of The Man Who Wasn't There, while seeing parallels between joyful, comic Bohemia and the bucolic atmosphere of O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Shut off from the rest of the world by sunflowers, secrets, and a history of violence that includes, perhaps, murder and suicide (their father may have killed their mother and then shot himself, or this lurid memory may be the product of Clare's and Felice's orphaned imaginations), the house locks brother and sister in an atmosphere of familial guilt.
These pickup games are extensions of backyard contests where younger brothers play against older brothers, friends and cousins in an atmosphere that forges something more important than chalkboard technique: toughness, fearlessness and competitiveness.
"You can have a nice casual conversation in an atmosphere like this," his brother added.
Along with his older sister Rose and his younger brother Dakin, Williams was raised in an atmosphere defined by rupture and discord.
